SMWest 2006: Trying to control the uncontrollable

Steve Safran November 1st, 2006

An observation: there are an awful lot of presenters here talking about “taking back control” of content. Hogwash. It’s silly to think that the video of yours that wound up on YouTube somehow cannibalized from your site. It didn’t. It added to your reputation and will have a great long-term effect on your relationship with your audience. You can’t take back control, and even if you could - you shouldn’t. Empower your biggest supporters to scream your content at the top of their lungs. Give them great tools to do it. Imagine if the web didn’t exist, and someone came to your marketing department and said “You know those crappy promos we run that nobody watches? I’m going to come up with a system that lets people pick our absolutely best clips and share them with all their friends. And the best part? They do all the work and it doesn’t cost us a thing!” Don’t you think that would get approval immediately?