I love Second Life as an idea because I love Neal Stephenson‘s Snow Crash. And, as a geek, I love the metaverse, too. I am also a marketer and I don’t like Second Life for marketing. Why? Second Life Marketing has only one life, and for many clients, that only life is in the novelty of being the first Fortune 50 company to “go there.”
“The only problem for marketers? Second Life is a pretty worthless place to try and sell people on your company’s brand and products. Wired gives a laundry list of drawbacks, but the biggest is that very few people actually use Second Life.” Via Tech Dirt via Wired.
There is no there, there. And, once you set up shop on Second Life, there is only one life to it: once you stop paying into it, it goes away. I am also no good at it, so what’s the use. I know folks who rock the Second Life promotional campaign like wild.
I don’t market on Second Life because I am an SEO guy deep down. There are two kinds of people: mods & rockers, yes, but also SEO & SEM.
Search Engine Marketing is ephemeral. As long as you pay for traffic, you get traffic. The same can be said of Second Life. I prefer to market textually and virally in open places leaving artifacts that endure and that turn up in Google long after the initial buzz dies down.
When I do something, I want to leave artifacts. When I join the conversation, I want my words to go on record. When there is a conversation on Second Life, it is like having a conversation at a dance party: it’s loud, there is very little if any record that you were there, and by morning, there is little proof that the party happened. The cleaners have been in and been out and all the fliers have been picked up and thrown away.
The only memory there usually is of anything having happened at both the dance party and in Second Life is the fond memories, some photos, and hopefully a kind soul who will have blogged about the fine time had by all.
I don’t know if I have it all figured out. I would love to be wrong. I might just be too SEO, too into leaving messaging and messages out there in the open, in the wild, becoming part and parcel of the conversation on record with the Google Records Office.
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