Social subversion

http://wheresthesausage.typepad.com/

More subversive views questioning the value of social media and suggesting we focus more on content.

Personally i think social's value varies enormously by sector, is it a big purchase or is it something where purchase and consumption are frequent. Is information readily available? Is there inherent risk in the purchase decision? Is it a fun product?

The other point made is that majority of people who interact with brands in social media tend to be loyal high value or dis-satisfied. Certainly in retail it is hard to get the former to purchase more so what is the value of social in enabling them to influence the less frequent buying majority.

Interesting to see its the same old case studies referenced. Where's the new news?

B2B: social isn't the start point

If we asked you what your tv strategy was, you would
understandably look a little perplexed. In fact whatever media we asked you
about you would think it mad to address in isolation. Social media is a vital
part of the media mix. However it is still in essence a communication channel,
albeit a very clever one. One that is flexible, one that allows you to be ultra-
responsive and to cap it all one that is measurable. It should be part of your
customer service strategy, help you reach influencers, support search and many
marketers use it as direct response PR and even sell. You can use it to inform,
engage, entertain, inspire. I am sure you have seen that chart on visits to
slide share.

So if you don’t need a social strategy what do you need? I reckon you need a content
strategy. You have to make yourself vaguely interesting, interesting enough for
the right people to want to talk about you, want to share what you have to say,
want to interact with you. It is less about what you want to say and what your
brand is and isn’t it is about having an opinion, perhaps zigging to
competitors zagging.

MC Hammer on social media and marketing

This is really fun and strangely impressive. MC Hammer speaking at Stanford. The best ever time to be an entreprenooooor, a downmarket.

http://youtu.be/OfKCGRnjkTw

Corporate humanisation

I wonder if the real benefit of social media to the marketer will be the humanisation of companies. Of course businesses have looked to control the brand and the marketing experience but we all know that is getting harder and harder, closer to impossible. Trying to monetise social media in social selling works, dell do it great, so do eurotunnel, there are lots of others. But it may be coming a zero sum game of sorts. Brand a steal from brand b, brand a also canibalises its other channels and manages to give additional margin away to customers who display considerable loyalty already.

Heard it argued that technology is killing the need for intelligence and the real skill shortage will be social skills. that is not happening yet but certainly intelligence is being replaced. Normally when you say that there is a bit of an outcry but no one thought a computer would beat Gary Kasparov. Apparently that is a trivial task according to IT experts, sounds bloody tricky to me (that's the level up from downright impossible). They say quizzes are harder for computers. To be honest i would rather think that a computer is managing air traffic control than a pro plus popping physics grad so I am all for computers taking over (judgement day scenarios aside)

So back to the humanisation of companies. everyone has a facebook page, a twitter account maybe customer service staff start using it more haphazardly. Retail business like Best Buy in the US are doing this. Could service staff become almost heroic, cooler than the creative technologist, with a bigger following than the CEO. The only problem comes when they want to leave who owns the following and the fans if the they were acquired on company time, sounding corporate again.

Three reasons why companies fail/succeed with social media

Big companies don't tend to get it because ...

• it does not deliver sales tomorrow so they cant prove the business case
• they don't have the resource or specialist skills, they are geared up to campaigning and that's they way it will continue until ...
• agencies don't know how to charge them and make money out of it

Small companies tend to get it because ...

• it does deliver sales. http://www.bakertweet.com/
• they don't need specialist skills
• they could never afford agencies anyway.

Lesson in here somewhere. Think like a small company if nothing else.

7 B2B Social Media Tools You Haven't heard of

With the vast array of social media tools out there, it’s easy for some useful ones to get lost in the mix. Here’s a few that might be flying below the radar, but can be valuable tools for B2B marketers

Read more: http://socialmediab2b.com/2010/04/b2b-social-media-tools-3/#ixzz0vFpKKelt

7 B2B Social Media Tools You Haven’t Heard Of

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A Marketing DO list - distributed content

One thing that has changed over the last few years in marketing is an increasing need to go and do things rather than just talk about it. Unfortunately whilst small operations get this, the bigger corporations, clients and agencies alike, have not quite grasped this for a number of pretty understandable reasons. Firstly, there are internal pressures to get the strategy perfect. Secondly, how do agencies charge for earned media, which cannibalise their traditional revenues. As no one has quite mastered payment on performance, agencies will naturally do the work that feeds the children (we are getting older) and leave the other stuff to later. Thirdly, traditional media is more visible (success and failure) to the organisation so as a marketing director you focus on this stuff first. I would.

Distributed content is a classic example. We all know it is a great idea but we can spend too much time in circular strategising.

"How and where are we going to distribute content?"
"Depends on what you are saying?"
"What do we talk about it, the stuff we are marketing or something else?"
"Surely we can re-use our content?"

So here are some DO-ing guidelines.

1. Distributed content is a longer term strategy so focus on your brand, your attitude and what makes you different. Sacrifice strategy to be interesting. In other words don't bother distributing boring marketing stuff or thinly veiled advertising unless you are Apple.

2. Dedicate time and resource (that means people) to creating interesting stuff. You cant just wave goodbye to your content as it leaves the door and hope it brings the goodies back. Hire a journalist, a copy writer. Create videos. How to's. How not to's. Top 10s. My mistakes. It is entertainment.

3. Social media. Get your videos on YouTube, Blinx and other video sharing sites. Get pictures on google images and other photo sharing sites. Wikipedia, How to sites. Link it. Tag it. Start now.

4. Use links and buttons in your email to entice visitors to other destinations. You don't want to be too in the face. Be brave, link away from your site. Host third party content tools in your site if you want to be really clever and transparent.

5. Having already established links with friendly bloggers keep them informed, they are linked with each other so this can snowball really quickly.

6. Plan news releases for next 12 months. Manage your media relations. They love content if it is good. Foster relations, don't harass them ask them what they want. Try using a phone as well as email.

And if you get this half right it should improve relevance scores and traffic through organic search and .

One good, one bad

Having seen several friends lose jobs recently i thought i would promote this article. How to use linked in to find a new job, no rocket science but i do like it when you see social media being used practically rather than just being a time toilet.

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/02/10-ways-to-use.html

And dont you just hate presentations that start with a definition. Effectively you are saying if you set me such a stupid task, it is your fault if you get a crap response. You should have checked the dictionary definition you loser.