Perspectives Individual Outside Article Response

For our group perspectives project, my group members and I chose to ask the question:
how does social media positively impact economies? Jay Baer, a social media strategy
consultant, and Amber Naslund, the vice president of strategy at Radian6, were both authors on
the same article that I came across while researching articles and together they were able to
write, “Capitalize on the opportunity economy.” This article really went in depth about how
social media enables people to deliver their just in time marketing to their audience but at the
same time making sure that the message is relevant and authentic to the creator. The article
discussed about how social media is not just about planned campaigns and editorial calendars,
but instead more about personalizing a relevant offer to the mind of a customer. Opportunity
economy is all about contextually appropriate, just in time marketing. By doing so, you’ll find a
chance to engage with a potential customer and make the most of it. One of the key points that
this article discussed was about how every location has an opportunity for growth. An example
about how the social media platform, Foursquare, allows you to check in at a restaurant and how
you may get a notification on your smartphone about visiting a top-notch restaurant in the area
just by being able to identify your location and getting free food by showing that restaurant your
notification. If this kind of technology were not available to social media, it would be much more
difficult to offer this kind of a deal since handing coupons to your restaurant at other restaurants
would be unethical and rude. Another brief example given from this article was about a food
product called SunButter which is produced from sunflower seeds. The reason why this is
relevant is because if you were to search on any search engine about peanut allergies or
alternatives to peanut based products, SunButter could effectively be the solution to those
questions and conflicts. By credibly answering these issues in a helpful way, SunButter is
engaging in the opportunity economy. Musician Dave Carroll has been praised for his YouTube
video, “United Breaks Guitars” not because it has been viewed approximately 10 million times,
but because of the impact his video has had on the way businesses react and respond to issues
brought up by consumers. Only four days after Carroll had posted his YouTube video was when
the brand that had been played by Carroll, Taylor Guitars, decided to respond back to Carroll via
YouTube video. The video featured Bob Taylor, the company’s cofounder, in the company’s
factory service center addressing “the issues of interest to guitar players,” said Chalisse Zolezzi,
Taylor Guitars public relations manager. The video alone has had 522,000 views on YouTube
since the time that this article was written. This just goes to show how Taylor Guitars took
advantage of an opportunity that they saw they could help resolve and by doing just that they
were able to capitalize on the opportunity economy. At the same time, they were able to
effectively market themselves when that wasn’t eve their intended purpose to do so.
Personally, I enjoyed reading this article very much. Jay Baer and Amber Naslund did an
amazing job creating this article together because they just seemed to have so much personal
knowledge regarding the opportunity economy and the steps that they provided in which the
average person whether it be a new upcoming entrepreneur or college student like myself could
follow in order to succeed is something that I now have the knowledge of and it’s something that
I will keep in the back of my mind and use for the rest of my life thanks to them. While this
article wasn’t the longest piece of information in terms of size and pages, in all honesty it really
didn’t have to be. I would so much rather read a shorter, simpler article such as this one that is
packed with useful information and tips that I can use in my everyday life than read a much
longer, more confusing article with terms that the average person may not be familiar with which
is not helpful to anyone and for that I thank Baer and Naslund. This article not only helped
explain to me what exactly the opportunity economy is, but it also opened a new perspective for
me on just how useful a tool social media really can be and how with just a little bit of practice
and patience, social media can open doors for opportunities for people that are just not available
anywhere else. As I said earlier, reading this article was actually a lot of fun and I would
definitely recommend reading this article to anyone else who is curious about how social media
can be related to the economy or for anyone who just wants to be informed about how they can
take advantage of social media for their own personal knowledge and gain.

Annotated Works Cited

Baer, Jay, and Naslund, Amber. “Capitalize on "the Opportunity Economy: Social Media
Enable You to Deliver Just-in-Time Marketing, but Be Sure Your Message Is Relevant and
Authentic.(tech Talk).” Communication World, vol. 29, no. 1, International Association of
Business Communicators, Jan. 2012.