Social Media Blog by Michael Brito
Insights into the social web & real
time community engagement
time community engagement
Over the last couple of years, social technologies and applications have emerged that allow interactive marketers to listen to what’s being said about their products and brand online. Smart marketers are now using this feedback to know when and where to engage with consumers on the social web. However, listening by itself is only half of the equation. Marketers must not only listen, converse and engage; but they must now act. By taking the collective knowledge and feedback from the community and using it as source of innovation and change, they will have the opportunity to create strong brand advocacy. I wrote this article last week for my company blog, Edelman Digital, that explores this topic in more detail. I would love your feedback! Thanks.
According to this report, senior marketers say that social networks and applications were their biggest priority for their 2010 marketing plans, followed closely by digital infrastructure. The others priorities included search optimization, mobile, blogger outreach, viral campaigns, digital advertising, email marketing and games. While these are all important, what’s interesting is that “community management and/or engagement” is not mentioned at all. Perhaps those marketers interviewed consider community management a part of “social networks” but I doubt it.
… and brand engagement starts with building successful communities.
Hat tip to Ray Hartjen (twitter/blog), my previous boss at Sony for reminded me about the Fish! Philosophy. Ahh yes, so what is the Fish! Philosophy you ask. Well, it’s actually a pretty cool book. It’s an easy read and it’s inexpensive; but the lessons learned are valuable and can be applied to building strong communities. The FISH! Philosophy includes four very simple, interconnected practices:
Be There is being emotionally present for people. It’s a powerful message of respect that improves communication and strengthens relationships.
Play taps into your natural way of being creative, enthusiastic and having fun. Play is the spirit that drives the curious mind, as in “Let’s play with that idea!” It’s a mindset you can bring to everything you do.
Make Their Day is finding simple ways to serve or delight people in a meaningful, memorable way. It’s about contributing [...]
I had a short yet interesting twitter discussion the other day with Jim Durbin, a social media recruiter, about social media and commissions. It then evolved into a brief discussion about the different roles in social media. I think Jim was perhaps insinuating that I thought social media was just about community management. It’s not.
At the core, social media is about a direct relationship-conversation-engagement-dialogue-poke-nudge-reciprocal-follow between a brand and a consumer. In my mind which has been wrong many times, community management serves as the execution arm of social media in most cases. I am probably oversimplifying it a bit but I think you catch my drift.
I wonder what exactly that budget will be spent on.
Today, Mashable highlighted a Forrester report that forecasts budget spend in social media to “grow at an annual rate of 34 percent – faster than any other form of online marketing and double the average growth rate of 17 percent for all online mediums.”
The report doesn’t go into specifics on what exactly that money will be spent on; and whether the investment will be used to talk AT the conversation, IN the conversation, or both.
