Today, online marketing means not only being where your customers are, but also knowing the right ‘amount.’ Being on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube are all great, but for consumers, it can sometimes be overwhelming. Remember that the goal of online marketing and social media isn’t to bombard customers and fans with your products and promotions. Just how no one likes pop-up advertisements and rarely go back to sites that have them, customers and fans will lose interest and more importantly trust in your brand if you are overpowering them with your message.

Successful social media and online marketing campaign should always do two things: Listen and Learn.

Why You Need To Listen

In school, the importance of listening skills are repeated over and over. Whether it’s lecture or a business meeting, listening to what others have to say is extremely important. With that said, listening to what your customers or fans are saying is extremely important. Ignoring what your market is saying about you is essentially turning your back on those that made you who you are.

For companies, the success of marketing campaigns are based on dollars and cents. With the evolution of online marketing though, this may all change. Because of the open communication lines online, consumer sentiment has a huge part in the success of products, campaigns, and brands. A great example of this is the impact that users on Twitter had on the highly controversial movie, ‘Bruno.’ In an industry that thrives off word of mouth advertising, Twitter users who voiced their negative opinions about the movie in turn dissuaded others from watching it. During that weekend, negative reviews of Bruno were rampant on Twitter and Facebook. Although the opening weekend was a huge success, the subsequent days following it were nothing short of disappointing. Could this have been avoided? Absolutely. Not only were critics uneasy about the content of the movie, but in the months leading up the movie, Facebook and Twitter users voiced their feelings about leaked content of the movie.

Learn

Aside from listening to what your online community is saying, learning from them is also a key component to online marketing. Studying trends and how audiences react to content is extremely important. Through empirical evidence, organization should always be aware of how markets, fans, and customers are affected by trends and changes. A great example of this is when Facebook decided to change their site design early last year. Although there appeared to be huge animosity toward it, statistics showed that there was actually a drastic jump in site traffic and registration that remained constant after the new site design. Remember that you should never take what’s on the surface and to always dig deep. Online marketing is not just about having great content and pushing it out there for the online world. It involves constant change and the ability to re-invent your campaign at any moment and still remain relevant.

Meet Craig Newmark. You may not recognize him if he walked past you, but you’ve probably heard of the website he started. Craigslist. With an estimated 48.7 million people visiting his site a month from the U.S. alone, Craigslist is in a league of its own.

While it continues to climb in traffic, one thing continues to stay consistent: the lack of change. Unlike sites like Apple, where the main page seems to change every other day, Craigslist has had the same bland user interface that everyone has now become accustomed to seeing. Aside from minor changes here and there, Craigslist has made little change to their website for the most part. With no future plans to change the site nor many of its policies, with online engagement and social media on the rise, the question now becomes: What Would Craigslist Do?

No Thanks

“No Thanks.” That is the answer that you would probably get if you asked Craigslist about making a change to the site. Starting at first as an email distribution list for friends in 1995, Craigslist has gone through hundreds and thousands of ’suggestions’ with few changes since then.

Although Craigslist generates revenue solely through paid job ads in select cities, it’s not that they can’t find other means, it’s that they won’t. To many, this is mind boggling, but to Craigslist, its just another day. By no means should anyone worry though, analysts suggest that Craigslist will bring in over $100 million this year from their paid job ads.

Why They Won’t Change

No one can pinpoint the exact reason why Craigslist doesn’t take advantage of the many opportunities they have, but many will agree is that if Craigslist did decide too, they would change the e-commerce landscape.

With just 30 employees, Craigslist gets more traffic than leading e-commerce sites eBay and Amazon.com, each of whom have more than 15,000 employees. Take that into account also the fact that their customer service has been called out for being unresponsive and unhelpful along with it being accused of facilitating prostitution, it is incredible how far they have come.

Door Is Closing

As of right now, Craigslist is in a league of their own. They dominate their market in helping individuals conduct face to face transactions and have yet to have had a serious contender. Still, the question becomes how long will they go without a challenge. When MySpace broke out on the scene, they were seemingly untouchable. Then came Facebook and later, Twitter. Although Craigslist has ruled their market for almost 10 years, everyday they don’t make a move, someone else is.

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Craig Newmark may never be as recognizable as Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, but perhaps if he changed his name to Craigslist he would be. Nevermind, Craigslist doesn’t change for anyone. Even for Craig himself.

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Joseph Yi is the Director of Marketing at Viralogy.com and works in social media and sports consulting. Find more about him on his website.