Entries Tagged 'Social Networks' ↓

The good people over at PRWeek provided me with an opportunity to discuss the 2008 social media landscape in a piece published this week called “Social Media’s Impact Still Growing.” (subscription required). Full text below, and comments are always welcomed.

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This is shaping up to be another banner year for social media and a good time for everyone in marketing and PR to pay a lot closer attention to this fast evolving medium - if you aren’t already. Social media, loosely defined as consumers creating and sharing content and information online, exploded in 2007. If you’ve been waiting for this trend to go away, you’re going to have a very long wait.

Social media is now appearing in every aspect of society and form of media we consume today. Flip on the TV to the latest presidential debate and networked voters on YouTube ask questions along with Wolf Blitzer and instantaneously share their opinions across the Web. Click onto USAToday.com and reader reactions to breaking news are displayed in the header with as much prominence as stories written by veteran journalists.

There is little question anymore that social media impacts the news industry. A recent Brodeur study found that 75% of journalists say blogs and other forms of social media help shape editorial coverage. Mainstream media organizations are redefining the way they provide value in this fragmented media landscape by smartly combining citizen perspectives with their trusted brand of journalism.

Social media also permeates every corner of the Internet - not just in the well-known communities of Facebook and MySpace, where a combined 500,000 people join those two sites alone each day. A recent study concluded that 70% of Americans 15-34 are actively involved in some form of social networks. When you consider that only one-sixth of the world’s population is online today, it’s easy to see that social media is really in its infancy.

This global trend has not escaped the attention of forward-thinking companies, many of which are now listening and learning from people around the world. Over the past year, more brands began shifting some of their marketing communications and research priorities to focus on this area. It’s not just lip service.

“The rise of social media is causing companies to rethink how they allocate marketing dollars,” says Jeff Zabin, research fellow at Aberdeen Group, who also predicts that social media is quickly moving from the “fringe to the center.” Consumers are freely providing brands with an endless source of insights about their products, customer service, and competitors. Savvy marketers are identifying where customers and influencers intersect on the Web and are quickly improving their ability to listen, learn and participate. Richard Feinberg, director of the Center for Customer-Driven Quality at Purdue University hit the nail on the head when he recently stated, “Businesses that don’t participate are going to be left behind.”

The quickest way to keep pace is to be part of the communities that mean the most to your brand or clients. The PR industry’s heritage in earning coverage instead of paying for placements give it a leg up in winning the trust of a new generation of influencers.

The time is more than right to make social media a strategic priority in 2008 by elevating its importance within your organization, listening a lot closer to what’s going on and what’s being said, educating your employees, and measuring the impact of social media on your brand.

Mike Spataro

It’s always nice to have your company recognized by industry peers. More importantly, it further validates the business path we’ve chosen to take here at Visible Technologies. Being named this week by AlwaysOn as one of The OnMedia Top 100 companies of the year really underscores the great work by our management team and our TruCast, TruView and 1st Query product teams. Some of the previous winners have gone on to accomplish great things and we hope to keep that trend going in 2008 and beyond.

More important than winning awards though is the undeniable momentum around social media within the advertising community. Here are just a few of the interesting items discussed during the opening sessions of this week’s event:

• social media was labeled as the #1 area that will impact the media industry in 2008, even ahead of online advertising. And this was from a survey of executives in the advertising and media industry.
• the majority of advertising people surveyed say they still don’t know how to make social media fit within their media plans. No real surprise there. Many of them are still struggling with the whole concept of social media because they are looking at the business from strictly an old school advertising mindset.
• the Web now has about 30% of U.S. consumers eyeballs, but only 6.8% of ad spending. Expect that gap to continue for several more years before advertisers really catch up.
• Most Gen Y’ers are consuming more than 60% of content produced by someone they already know. This is obviously another impact of the social networks they belong to.

There are still plenty of sessions underway today and tomorrow that are being blogged and can be accessed via live chat and webcasts in case you want to drop in and check some of them out.

Mike Spataro

No matter how many times a social media event is planned in Boston these days there never seems to be enough meeting space to hold everyone who has jumped on the bandwagon. It was a standing room only crowd of well over 100 people at this week’s MITX panel discussion on the opportunities and implications for social media marketers. Ironically, the new media event was staged at very old and historic Faneuil Hall and featured a panel of experts from Facebook, MySpace, Eons, IBM and StudioCom. Larry Weber of the W2 Group served as moderator.

Jeff Taylor, founder of the baby boomer social network Eons, offered his usual variety of interesting insights. Taylor is more qualified than most when it comes to the Web having successfully launched both a Web 1.0 company - Monster - and now is trying to catch lighting in a bottle twice with Eons. Taylor noted that social media’s ability to be “an inch wide and a mile deep” presents real challenges for traditional news organizations that operate just the opposite and must appeal to a broader audience to be successful.

Facebook VP Tom Arrix called social media the biggest communications trend of the last 10 years and encouraged brands to pay closer attention to what’s being said about them in online communities or risk losing a major competitive advantage. “They are a gold mine of information.” Arrix also had an interesting observation that social media has actually helped people return to a time when previous generations used to really keep in touch with friends and family on a more personal level. That’s very true.

Suzanne Skop of MySpace said her company is extremely focused on providing original programming these days and now has 72 million active MySpace users. Not bad for a social network barely talked about any more. There was also a lively exchange between panelists and audience members on if and how content creators should be recognized and rewarded for providing valuable information that is being capitalized on by platform providers and others.

Mike Spataro

Mark Glaser has an excellent piece on how mainstream media organizations are grappling with the issues of consumer participation. Interestingly many sites are reporting significant increases in the number of consumers who are joining the conversation. The debate over moderation and anonymous posting remains a challenge for many news sites. It wasn’t long ago that MSM outlets were debating whether or not they even wanted to include comments, so the industry has come a long way in a very short period of time.

CRMBuyer (of all places) has a interesting article today on brands competing for consumer affection in social networks. Interesting quote in the piece from Richard Feinberg, director of the Center for Customer-Driven Quality at Purdue (great job title), who says, “Businesses that don’t participate are going to be left behind.” Thanks to Jeff Zabin of Aberdeen Group for the kind reference.

Mike Spataro