Social Media and Security Marketing..
January 21, 2008
So, this conversation has come up over and over again in the last few days – I keep ending up in detailed conversations with security marketing people about how to create a presence using social media.
It’s amazing to me that information security people are always on the cutting edge of technology (kept there by, in my opinion, the fact that the most vulnerable technology is always the newest). But we’re terribly bad (as an industry) at keeping up with the cutting edge in marketing. I look at someone like Jason Alba, who is a brilliant marketer with his blog, LinkedIn (and wrote the book on it), Facebook (he wrote the book on that one too), and Twitter.
And then I look at the companies in our industry. Nothing. Zip. Nada.
At least not that I’ve seen. So, I’m putting this one out there: who has good examples of security companies using any of the tools above? How about it? Anything? Bueller?
I’ve got a million ideas about how this could be done, but I’m not seeing it out there in the world. And it makes me sad.
Comments
8 Responses to “Social Media and Security Marketing..”
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But Mike….
This will never work. The entire security industry exists today in order to crush the existence and prevent access to the very sites to which you refer.
Silly rabbit, twit(ters) are for kids.
Security Marketing.
Oxymoron.
/Hoff
“Jason Alba” and “brilliant,” in the same sentence. I like it :p
You present a great question, it’s the same thing I think about with recruiters (how many of them are preparing for their next transition?), career coaches (how many of them are doing what they tell their clients to do? Networking, personal branding, etc.), resume writers (how many of them have their own resume ready?).
I don’t think there’s an excuse for not being prepared, but I think the problem is bigger than the security industry.
The big question, for me, is “how can we be more concerned about our careers than our jobs?”
Hackers and their security counterparts still favor IRC over Twitter (command line > web interface). With Twitter’s lack of a business model, the service’s future is uncertain compared to IRC which has been around 20+ years. For the near future, building an IRC Twitter bridge is as close of an adoption as you’re going to see in the security community.
Mike Rothman and Richard Bejtlich are the two best examples of security folks plugged into social media. While there are plenty of security bloggers, most of them have too much off-topic content or aren’t consistent with updates. It doesn’t help many people in the community obscure their identity with nicks, handles, no-last-names, etc (even Hoff fails this test, blogging as “beaker”). You can’t expect companies to lead the way when individuals “don’t get it” in the vein of Jason Alba’s monthly award. The majority of people in the security industry get an F on their personal branding scorecard.
Ehhh, not true. There are plenty of good security blogs (not just Mike R and Richard B
) and there is plenty of security people on, say, LinkedIn.
We use LinkedIn heavily for recruiting. I know many others do to.
There are security-themed groups on Facebook (esp local groups that meet, etc)
Twitter – I dunno. Not embraced this one yet – I don’t need any more ADD
Anton – I completely agree with you. There are security PEOPLE who are doing a great job of marketing themselves using Social Networking tools. I’m connected to multiple people on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. That’s the thing… we have people like Mogull, Hoff, Ptacek, etc. using these tools effectively.
But there are exactly zero COMPANIES that I’m seeing using the same tools to spread their message….
Well, what is a company if not a collection of people? I’ve seen dumb sales people sending ‘we are the best product’ via LinkedIn. Is that what you mean?
I am on LinkedIn = LogLogic on LinkedIn. I blog and a post goes to Facebook -> LogLogic message speads.
How else can it be?
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