The Season of Studies

There are three reports that came out recently worth noting for those a bit behind in their reading like I always seem to find myself.

Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff was generous enough to share his recent report on Keys to Creating a Social Strategy in which he lays out what he calls the POST method for social strategy development. Josh contends that most companies are going about creating social strategies backwards by focusing first on technology rather than audiences and strategy upfront. I couldn’t agree more even though I work for a social media tech firm. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in meetings where technology and tactics were the topics over strategy and objectives.

The POST method revolves around People, Objectives, Strategy and (then) Technology. Josh’s report lays out a sensible approach for companies to follow. It’s well worth the time even if you’re late to the reading game like me.

The second study was the widely covered and discussed “Digital Footprints: Online Identity Management“ report from Pew Research concerning the number of Americans who Google their own personal information. Research analyst Mary Madden expressed surprise in interviews this week that only about half of the people in the U.S. with Internet access have Googled themselves.

I don’t find that number surprising at all. In fact, I’d bet it’s lower than what Pew found. When you get away from the urban tech centers of our country, the average American isn’t living online, Googling all their friends and relatives, blogging every day or Twittering every five minutes. Some of us have a slanted view of the real world. Only a fraction of people who really need to be concerned about what appears about them in search engines have ever taken the time to check their results. If more of them did, I promise you’d see more people freaking out than you do at the moment.

The third study from USC’s Annenberg Center and Ketchum PR found that many communicators are out of sync with the way consumers now use media. This trend has been underway since the invention of the browser. Findings related to the growth of media usage by emerging markets make this study worth reading too.

Mike Spataro