All Good Things Must Come To An End
During the start of my sales career, I learned how to connect with others rapidly, which led me to build a large customer base in a short five months. I started my sales career in July of 1995, and by the end of the year, I was recognized as one of the top ten technical sales representatives in North America. Three hundred seventy reps had been selling the entire year, and how I managed to build my customer base in under six months was through connecting people to technology. Furthermore, my ability to influence ambassadors to sell my brand to other potential clients was absolutely the best-kept secret I acquired. Not that I was keeping a known trait a mystery, but what I managed to do was give people what they wanted in a high technological product. I listened attentively, asking the right questions and guided people toward what they wanted – solutions. I helped them understand the product and taught them the simplicity of using the product. It was straight forward no grand secret, but I did it with a tremendous amount of confidence in my abilities and passion.
Over the years, many distinguished people who understood how to influence others became public figures virtually overnight. One example is Orkut Büyükkökten, who spent his early years in Germany with his parents moving there when he was one year old. Orkut was one of the first to launch a social networking site that grew in users throughout its term by about 30 million. Orkut loves two things coincidentally, making it his passion to give himself to the two most heartfelt things in his life – people and technology. His love, just like mine, was when I first started my sales career to dedicate his entire career connecting people through technology.
Orkut brand experience evokes a desire to want to join Orkut’s networking group. This brand advocacy further drives the Orkut brand-related stimuli to aid in reinforcing the brand’s design and identity. Orkut was particularly popular among technology workers and students. Moreover, Orkut carried a high prestige factor due to its invite-only membership list that further exemplified a member by being well connected in the technology realm.
When Orkut went live with orkut.com, they didn’t have any idea how popular it was going to be or how fast it would grow. It exceeded their expectation in every single possible way.
by Alok Soni
Orkut’s social networking platform was design with an ease of use, clean of clutter, and users were able to navigate freely to join other communities. Friends were able to rate each other for being cool and trustworthy. This type of use fostered an environment that spread rapidly into the number of friends and the largest communities on the site.
Over the years, Orkut’s heart remained in social networking, although working full time at Google he gave 20 percent of his time to developing other social networking sites. One particular site was called Eden. Orkut gave it this name because it represented a beautiful place for people to come together (like heaven), he stated.
In Brazil, where during Orkut prime time won the Brazilian market by gaining over 90% of page views in Brazil only. Brazil has emerged as one of the strongest markets for online retailers. Brazil, according to eMarketer, the country represents about 42% of all B2C eCommerce markets in Latin America. Orkut delivered at the right time; however, all good things must come to an end.
Did Orkut fall short to transition with audience demands
Brazilians became more demanding with blogging rights and social gaming engagement. As well as incorporating online video into marketing campaigns was a bit too trying for Orkut. This demand proved to be difficult for Orkut to continue and led to its demise. Problems from functionality with the website and other areas left Orkut unable to meet the needs of the culture and audiences.
Eventually, Orkut lost its consumers and ultimately replaced by other culturally cross-platform social media endeavors. Despite the adverse economic scenario of the past years, Brazil’s e-commerce market continued to show a positive growth trend and ended 2018 with an increase of 12% in revenue. I guess some would say that Orkut gave Brazil what they needed to prosper as well as they have and continue to thrive today as a 58 million e-consumers spending 53.2 billion on the web. Brazil continues to grow in e-commerce and m-commerce as the 6th largest smartphone market worldwide, all initiated by Orkut.
Although Orkut’s first social networking platform ended, his passion and legacy continues with Hello – a new social networking platform. Hello connects you with people and content around your passions. Enjoy an unexpected experience that lets you show the world who you are, express what you love, and create meaningful connections.
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Hey Robert!
So my first impression of this blog post was that it had a lot of great pictures that gave it some great color. With that being said, they added greatly to the structure of the blog as well and made it easy to read throughout the different ideas you covered. Also the headline was creative, I would think it would make someone want to find out what had to come to an end. Moving into the content that you provided I really liked how you incorporated a personal story in the beginning to add a personal touch right out of the gate. This intro really did a great job in transitioning into how Orkut changed the game and made it so people could connect through technology. Overall this blog was really informative and enjoyable to read. Great post!
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Hey Robert!
My first impression when I pulled up this blog was that it had great pictures that made it very colorful. The placement of them also made the formatting of the blog really nice and easy to follow along with. You also did a great job in being creative with your title and sub title. It made me want to understand what great thing had to come to an end and why exactly! I would imagine the reader would want to understand what this blog was all about. Moving over into the content, I really like how you used a personal story of your success in tech sales. This personal story really helped me to connect and so I’m sure it’ll do the same for many others. I liked how you showed the brand narrative of Orkut and his love for connecting to others through technology. I think overall, you did a great job in summing up what Orkut did successfully and what they didn’t do so successfully. Great post!
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Hey Robert!
Great Post! I love how you gave your initial background in the tech field and then transitioned into how Orkut developed his social media platform. Mahoney and Tang discuss that we should focus our social media efforts on mobilization and with your sales background it seems that you were able to drive people toward solutions. How do you think this concept can be applied to social media? Are there any traits that make a platform or social media effort more effective than others?
-Steven
References
Mahoney, L. M., & Tang, T. (2017). Strategic social media : from marketing to social change. Wiley-Blackwell.
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Hey Steven, I appreciate your kind words regarding my blog page. I think how I managed to reach my goals in sales successfully it can be applied in social media in a similar approach. The reason is that in social media, if there is a strong influencer that can be used as an ambassador, then I would follow my same approach. Enlist the help of the influencer if that individual has bought into the program. Then have the influencer do the selling for me.
The traits I can think of is the power of influence. I have pondered many hours on how I can leverage social media to my advantage. I have some ideas, but until I implement these ideas, I cannot say how successful my campaign will turn out. I do plan on testing the waters following a similar path as I did in B2B sales.
Good luke with your future endeavors
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