This fragmentation and the reversal of interaction is not bad news for companies, far from it. As people use newmedia tools to fragment into ‘peer groups’, that is people who have similar interests to each other, it is becoming easier to target specific interest and peer communities with your companies message and products. The internet and all its associated newmedia tools are becoming more sophisticated in finding and connecting with these social groups. There are amazing opportunities for companies to research, or to hire newmedia professionals to research the newmedia landscape and find ‘peer holes’, that is a peer group that does not have a structure for community interaction, and provide the platform for them to communicate.

It is also important for businesses to provide content that users can get delivered to ‘their internet’. Never expect someone to come to your site, deliver your site to them!!! If you don’t have feeds in your site then you are missing out because surfing the internet was yesterday, today most people find their content via referral from peers. Notice the most, not all, but there is a trend going away from surfing to referral.

But its a jungle out there, so how do you stand out? How do you make sure its your content that gets referred? Here are 5 ways to stand out and get referred.

1 – Know Your Audience (Consumer)
Before you do anything you must realise that your audience or consumer does not care about your company or your business. The only time they care is when a message or product has a benefit for them. There are many different types of benefits from, feeling good passing on information to others (referral) to the fact that your product will help them in their lives. First you need to know WHO your audience is, WHAT is important in their lives and WHY it is important to them (see Maslows hierarchy of needs). The HOW and WHEN to deliver message will be determined by the WHO, WHAT and WHY. Know your audience before you act or it will be to your peril.

2 – Deliver Exceptional Content
All your competitors are just one click away! In newmedia there are two levels of content, exceptional and everything else. If you don’t deliver exceptional content then you are simply another part of that newmedia jungle and you will never be noticed. There is an unspoken belief amongst newmedia users that if it is important it will stand out above all other content. It is amazing the different response that the same message will receive with different delivery. Be exceptional, don’t settle for anything else!

3 – No Control / Know Control
Think that newmedia is a scary place to put your message or products? There are many companies that afraid of people criticising them, their company or products in a public arena. Some executives believe that there is ‘no control’ over the newmedia conversation, so they run in the opposite direction. Their problem is they have simply spelt it incorrectly by their inward perception of their company. The wonderful thing with newmedia is that it is transparent and if someone criticizes you then you have a chance to fix the issue publicly and when people see that you as a company have a forum where people can go vent and get help it build respect and trust in you and your company. The key here is not to think that there is ‘no control’ but to ‘know’ how you will ‘control’ these types of issues when they appear. We call this ‘know control’ and it is simply being prepared and knowing how to react in these circumstances.

4 – Memorable – Actionable – Transferable
Three important points all rolled up into one.
4.1 – Make your content memorable! If it is memorable then it makes it easier for your audience to progress to the next two sub-points.
4.2 – Your content must always have a avenue for them to put it into action. Here is a simple deadly mistake people make all the time on the web, they use the words, “coming soon”. Never create content or show content that the audience cannot use or put into action. Always have either a single or multiple avenues for the content to become active in the audiences lives.
4.3 – Deliver the content so the audience can then on-deliver it to their peers, easily!!

5 – Create Outstanding Value
Edward DeBono states, “The future success of any business is going to be all about value”. In fact he has developed a new word that describes the business age we are in, valufacture. It is no longer good enough to simply manufacture goods and sell them to the market, now our goods must provide ‘real value’ in the lives of the consumers. This is the same for promoting or participating in the newmedia world. To be successful in newmedia you MUST develop ‘outstanding value’ for the audience. Without exception all successful newmedia campaigns and projects have moved beyond simply providing content to providing value. They have broken conventional industry concepts and practices to develop new ways to achieve a goal and deliver real value.

This is what is so exciting about newmedia, there are no rules and no manual, simply a blank piece of paper waiting for you to develop a new way to engage your audience that delivers outstanding value.