Read this great article posted on Darren Monroe’s Blog. Amazing what stuff comes down the pipe via the “twitosphere”… I’m learning a heck of a lot from Darren’s blog and his material on twitter and social media is definitely worth checking out…
**from Darren’s Blog:
Here is an example of company with some old fashioned knowledge acquirement know how. The old saying is if it is so simple that even a 4 year old can do it then either learn it quick or run out and get a four year old ASAP. Morgan Stanley took the philosophy to heart as they decided to use a 15 year old to brief them on teens usage of social media in the UK. I think the interesting feedback is about Twitter. The 15 year old young man Matthew Robson, said that Twitter is NOT a favorite of teens in the UK because they rather use their text credits to text in general instead of tweeting.You can read more here about How Teenagers Consume Media: the report that shook the City.
Whats can Online Entrepreneurs learn from this Story?
Two simple words: niche marketing. I know you might be reading that word all of the time but niche marketing involves gathering information from a specific demographic. Morgan Stanley was smart to do this. You must continually focus and leverage niche opportunities. I always strongly advise that my clients partner with experts in any market that they want to build a niche website. If Morgan Stanley could teach online entrepreneurs one thing is to build your partnership network for your niches.
Below is a piece of the story from Morgan Stanley with a link back to the main article. Whats interesting to note also is their headline. They basically used the Twitter name to gain more attention but the article has nothing to do with Twitter.
Morgan Stanley trumpets Teen’s Twitter tutorial
Peter Lynch famously told investors to “buy what you know” — that is, to invest in the companies that made what they personally used and liked. But Lynch wasn’t afraid to rely on the intuition of people he knew and trusted when they found something in the marketplace that they simply loved: It was Lynch’s wife who clued him in to the appeal of L’Eggs pantyhose. (Or at least that’s how Lynch tells the story.)
Unfortunately, it’s not always so easy to find someone who can so smartly assess the appeal of something you don’t personally know much about. How, for example, can we make sense of new technologies when we aren’t even remotely in the demographic these new new things are aimed at? (It would be a bit like asking grandpa to evaluate the appeal of the Jonas Brothers.)
Some recent research out of Morgan Stanley attempts to answer the question of what the kids are into when it comes to media and technology by doing something that seems so obvious that it’s a wonder no one tried it before: They asked a kid. Specifically, Morgan Stanley’s European media analysts turned to a 15-year-old intern to explain just how British teens make use of all their new media options. And when the intern, Matthew Robson, turned in a report that actually made more sense than a lot of adult-penned investment bank research and….