Entries Tagged 'Social Media' ↓

As I enter my third year working for a social media company, I thought this might be a good time to reflect back on a few of the things what I’ve learned since joining VT two years ago this month, and what I see as some of big trends on the horizon.

Luckily I’ve been able to work with some of the world’s biggest brands as they ramp-up their social media strategies and operations, making the past 24 months a challenging but fun time to be in this part of the Internet industry. So here goes…

• Monitoring to Intelligence: There is no doubt companies serious about social media are more interested in business intelligence than just monitoring. If you want to know who is really understands social media, look at the brands that not only get involved in communities but take what they learn and have a systematic approach to integrate that intelligence across their organizations.
• Content Coverage and Quality: With the rapid expansion of new sources and the growth of communities in so many new places on the Web, brands have to be obsessed with the scope of coverage and the filtering of data into actionable insights. The old days of ignoring single voices is long over and most companies today want a comprehensive way to stay on top of new sources around the world. Smart companies already know who their top targets are, but they want to sleep at night knowing they have as much of the Web covered as possible.
• Dynamic vs. Static: The explosion of interest in blogs and other forms of social media by corporate America is based on the increasing need to have information available nearly as fast as it appears online. Not long ago companies were content with weekly, and even monthly, reports - but not anymore. The need for real-time, dynamic data is the primary reason marketing and communications executives are now wrestling with their colleagues in market research over social media budgets.
• Social Media is Hard Work: Some companies underestimate what it takes to integrate social media into their organizations. What looks easy on the surface - connecting with audiences online - is actually very hard to implement for many brands. Money is definitely moving to this discipline, but many companies still don’t have the hang of it in terms of strategy, people and organizational resources just yet.
• ROI Model: It’s still a hung jury on the best way to integrate social media insights into existing market research, brand marketing, communications and customer service from an ROI perspective. Half the people I’ve talked to say it’s a new paradigm and should not ever be lumped with existing ways of measuring success, and the other half say if the industry can’t slot social media into traditional marketing metrics it’s not going anywhere. In my mind, they are both right to a degree.
• Internal Ownership: It’s going to take a few more years before everyone figures out that social media crosses all functions within a company, very similar to what we went through 13 years ago when companies were trying to decide who “owned” the corporate Web site. Same thing here. The most savvy brands have everyone from marketing to communications to market research to legal involved. The number of seats at the table is definitely increasing.
• Go Global: Companies are dipping their toe in the water here in the U.S., but increasingly demanding a global solution because they already know where this is all headed. Brands are going to continue to kick the tires of different providers until they find one that meets their needs and it better have a global solution to win.

I hope the next two years are just as much fun.

Mike Spataro

Toby Bell, a leading analyst at Gartner Research, has just published a great new paper entitled “Policies and Procedures to Manage Enterprise Internet Reputation“. The Gartner team refers to the space EIRM or Enterprise Internet Reputation Management, which entails both search as well as social sites that can have an impact on corporations and brands. Although, that term is unique to Gartner others in the space like Forrester, Aberdeen, and IDC have dedicated analyst’s leading practices in this area as well. Toby lays out some ground rules and steps that organizations should be actively putting in place to understand and interact with search and social media conversations that consumers are having. I strong encourage brands to take a look at his findings, recommendations, and steps to enlightenment.

Some of the key findings:

- “Social media is an unfamiliar territory for enterprises, with very different rules for engagement”

- “…Social media blurs the demarcations between public and private information, increasing the likelihood that consumers will unintentionally or negligently say publicly what they meant to say privately”

- “Time scales on the internet are more compressed and the implications of a negative event can be far-reaching”

Net-net is that organizations need to understand this medium and have a plan for understanding, interacting, and engaging with consumers that are already talking about them.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

Sound radical? Well, I would have thought so too not long ago, but now I’m not so sure.

When I jumped into the Internet game in the mid-90’s, I was convinced right away that the Web would have a profound impact on communications, but that it would take a long time time for a lot to change. Little did I know how much would change and how fast that change would come.

By the turn of the century the talk about print publications starting to disappear was no longer a prediction, but a reality. The first publications started dropping soon after and then last year NY Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr., hinted that he wasn’t sure the NY Times would be available in print for more than five more years. Now, that’s not to say the NY Times or any of the other national news organization is going out of business, but rather the distribution of its content will change and the business model will be very different than what it is today.

Now, I’m starting to see the same trends that impact print starting to happen with TV viewing, and I don’t mean the latest declining TV viewership stats. What I mean is I’m starting to see a shift in the next generation’s usage of televisions. They are still watching TV and other video programming, of course, but increasingly so on their laptops and not always on the giant high definition TV screens manufacturers want us to keep buying. I’m not sure I would see the day when teenagers walk out of a room with a 50-inch plasma and go into another room to watch a movie on a 17-inch monitor, but it happens more than you know.

I absolutely can see a tipping point down the road when sales of TVs start to decline, just like the decline of readership of daily newspapers and books. Perhaps it takes place when more than half of the current baby boom generation is no longer around, but mark my words I think the time will come when TV boxes could be obsolete.

Mike Spataro

If you haven’t had time to download and check out Universal McCann’s third annual “Power to the People Social Media Tracker” report, you really should. This is one of the more comprehensive analysis of social media out there with the surveying of 17,000 Internet users across 29 countries. It took the three-day Memorial Day weekend for me to get through the entire report. Here’s some of the highlights:

• social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic and cultural development;
• Asian markets are leading in terms of participation, creating more content than any other region around the world;
• China has the largest blogging community with more than 42 million;
• 57% have joined a social network, making it the number one platform for content creation and sharing;
• blogs are a mainstream media worldwide and collectively rival any other media now; and,
• 36% think more positively about companies that participate in social media;

Thanks to Jeff Beringer of GolinHarris for flagging the study for me and many others.

Mike Spataro

Yesterday I conducted a webcast featuring Peter Kim from Forrester Research and Marty Collins from Microsoft. We had great attendance and shared some of the latest findings from Forrester and how Microsoft is implementing a comprehensive framework and strategy for listening, learning, engaging and measuring efforts in social media.

We asked a polling question of the audience and got some interesting stats that I thought I would share. The question to attendees was “How would you rate your organization’s level of social media engagement?

Attendees answered as follows:

a. Not quite ready – no current social media plans (6%)

b. Information gathering – learning more about this new marketing channel ( 21%)

c. Getting started - monitoring blogs and other online conversations ( 19%)

d. Formal program/initiative – dedicated efforts, processes and resources in place

to collect social media data and learn from it ( 13%)

e. Comprehensive program – a complete process for monitoring, learning, participating

and evaluating social media engagement and results ( 8%)

f. No Answer ( 34%)

Of the attendee’s that participated in the polling question (thank you) I found the break down encouraging around the number of marketers who are getting started, have formal or comprehensive programs - 40% of attendees. That is much higher then recent data gathered (a bit more informally) at some recent speaking and round tables I have conducted.

Appreciate everyone’s attendance and participation.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies