Social Media Blog by Michael Brito
Insights into the social web & real
time community engagement
time community engagement
I did a search for “twitter manifesto” and I am sad to say that I was not the first to coin this phrase. Darn, there goes my legacy.
For the last couple of months, my participation on Twitter has grown significantly and yes, I have become somewhat addicted. I tend to follow certain peeps who I think I can learn from as well as personal friends and colleagues. Recently I had an ego “reality check” when I realized that a few of those peeps don’t follow me back, even though I attempted to interact with them on several occasions. I then asked myself, “do I provide value to those who follow me?, can people learn from me?, am I not liked?” I always thought I was a pretty likable guy.
Okay, it’s not really what you think; like a newsletter or magazine. POST (aka: the POST Method) is really the most effective acronym ever invented; ever since the four P’s of marketing. It’s a four-step approach that helps marketers define a social media marketing strategy for their business and/or clients. It’s been talked about for quite sometime, but I think it should continue to be drilled in the hearts and minds of marketers who either work in the social media space or are just thinking about it.
P equals people, “assess your customers’ social activities” – difficult in some organizations, easier in others. This really goes back to mapping your customer segmentation to Forrester’s “Social Technographics” which are behaviors displayed on a ladder with six levels of participation within social media.
It’s a year old but still very relevant and applicable today and I am sure it will live a long time. [...]
… at least on Cafemom it is. Those were the words from Andrew Shue, Founder of Cafemom at Agency Bootcamp in Chicago. It was his response to my question to the panel:
There is a lot of talk in the industry about the concept of community. What is your opinion of “community” and is it just a fad?
He went on to say that it’s natural human behavior to form, build and live within a community; and that this behavior dated back centuries when cavemen lived within some form of communal standards. He also said that “online communities” will increasingly grow and that these communities will HAVE to be even more relevant if they want to succeed. I couldn’t agree more with him and I think Cafemom is doing a great job at being relevant! I was also quite impressed with Andrew’s knowledge in this space. Perhaps playing an Ad Exec in [...]
I have been invited to moderate a panel on social media next week in Chicago. The panelists include marketing and sales professionals from IZEA, Myspace, Bebo, Facebook and CafeMom. I am super excited to attend the event and meet some of the panelists, especially since Andew Shue (co-founder of CafeMom) will be sitting on the panel. In case you don’t know, Andrew is a pretty awesome actor and was “Billy” on Melrose Place. He is also the brother of Elizabeth Shue, an actress who gained her popularity playing Daniel’s girlfriend in the Karate Kid (and yes, like most boys my age … I did have a crush on her).
The other day, I was involved in a rather heated, yet enlightening discussion with a dude who really hates marketing; and I don’t blame him. Here is an excerpt of one of his comments:
Yes, consumers want to be heard. They also want the option to NOT be annoyed by marketing. They want the option of not having to put up with marketers exploiting a medium meant for communication and turning it into one more TV commercial. Consumers should not have to spend time and effort to block marketers. Consumers do want a choice – given their druthers, most would choose to have no marketing at all.
He was responding to a comment I made about consumers demanding to be heard online; and even as a marketer, I unequivocally agree with his assessment. In later comments, he said that he was tired of marketers like me just “talking about having conversations with [...]
I came across this excellent resource (thanks Beth) this morning on several methodologies to measure social media.
Rachel Happe, who blogs over at the Social Organization put together this quite awesome list of metrics used to measure social media in the enterprise. This list goes beyond the common metrics used to measure the effectiveness (or not) of marketing activities. One metric that is not on the list – and I think we all struggle with this – is the ability to measure conversations. I mean, really, how do you attach a metric to a two-way dialogue? There are some really cool tools available that monitor conversations and brand mentions online though. Some even use algorithms that rate these conversations based on where they are taking place. Expensive but might be worth the investment.
Tags: measuring social media, social media metrics
