Marketing: Events vs. Processes

You know what I love about Seth Godin’s posts? They are quick, to the point, unusually poignant, and short reads (mostly). His post today, The reason social media is so difficult for most organizations, really brought it home today for what I’m doing in my career pursuit right now.
Hopefully you are aware that I’m attempting to get an interview with Vidli.com, The Official Video Licensor. They are a new startup that is offering free beta invites through the previous link. By clicking through and signing up for their no cost account, you’ll be helping get me closer to an interview with them for a new Social Media Marketing position they are offering.
The reason Seth’s post interested me so much is how it relates to what I’m doing in my approach to this contest. I’m doing my best to actually use a number of facets of social media to make my case to you, my friends and occasional readers. By creating what I hope to be genuine content that will benefit you and casually inserting a link and request the favor of having you sign up, I am focusing on the “process marketing” angle.
Some others attempting to get invited to interview with Vidli.com are effectively using Twitter and/or Facebook. From my perspective those attempts however amount to “event marketing”.
By that I mean those messages are all about the contest itself, the contestant, and not really about the longer tail advantages of creating quality content that could continue to drive traffic and interested users to Vidli in the long term future.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with pleading on Facebook and Twitter to help a lad (or lass!) out. I’m also inserting variations of those messages into my stream as well. My hope is that by attempting to do more than just beg for your action on my behalf, you’ll be more willing to take the 37 seconds or so and click through to the Vidli.com beta invite sign up form.
You would be helping me out tremendously. And if you told just 3 of your friends or family members about the good you did, that would help out 3X as much! Oh, did I mention that I’ll be buying beverages if/when I get hired by Vidli when this is all done (disclosure: you actually have to have signed up for me to qualify for this offer ;))
Thanks for your time!

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