Social Media Blog by Michael Brito
Insights into the social web & real
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Sound familiar? This is the 53rd thesis from the Cluetrain Manifesto. During the Cluetrain at 10 event, we were asked to break up into small groups of about 10. We were then given a sheet of paper with a small subset of the 95 thesis statements and asked to choose one. We chose number 53. Our assignment was to discuss what this statement meant to us; and outline tactical steps we can take to make the thesis come to life in our respective organizations. Here is what our group came up with after about ten minutes of discussion (doing my best to remember exactly what I presented):
The challenge for organizations is to identify the relevant conversations that are happening in the market; and have those same conversations internally. This requires an apparent culture shift within the organization which will be difficult in some organizations and easier [...]
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 [...]
Well, personally I think that conversations are the core of social media, but don’t take my word for it. I just launched a new blog authored by several internal marketers from industry leading companies like Intel, HP, Cisco, Yahoo, Yum Brands and Cadence who think the same. The blog, titled “Conversations Matter: Bridging the Social Media Gap” is focused on providing a unique perspective of social media; one that I believe is not well represented on the internet today. Unlike the Blog Council, everything we share on the blog is open to just about anyone who is interested in learning, listening and even contributing. We do not require membership or registration to have access to this information. We also take it one step further and discuss a holistic view of social media strategy; with corporate blogs being one element of that strategy. If you would like to contribute to the [...]
Remember G.I. Joe and those pretty awesome public service announcements, where one of the Joes would give an important safety lesson to a group of kids engaged in questionable behavior? They always ended with the famous exchange: “Now we know!” “And knowing is half the battle.” Well I say that “listening is half the battle” but I am willing to compromise. How about:
“Knowing when to listen is half the battle”
However you arrange the words, it makes complete sense when you apply it to social media. Listening and responding are only half the battle when engaging with consumers online. The other half of the formula is acting. It’s like being in a relationship. If my wife is upset that I leave my dirty socks on the living room floor every night; and I listen to what she is saying but continue to leave my socks there … well, you catch my [...]
Let’s see … is social media about conversions, traffic, click though rates and sales; or is it more along the lines of conversations, authenticity, transparancy and building a sense of community? I guess it really depends on who you ask. My colleague at Intel, Bob Duffy, who works on my team came up with this awesome cartoon that illustrates my point precisely (his post also touches on this subject).
Last weekend my laptop crashed. When I restarted it, it said that the systems.32\hll.dll file was corrupt and that I need to reinstall it. I called Dell, they couldn’t help me. I stressed about it all night because I have some really important data there. So Sunday morning, I brought my laptop to Best Buy/Geek Squad so they could at least save my data. Someone had told me that they were awesome and can fix anything.
I got a call this morning from the Geek Squad and they told me that they couldn’t retrieve my data; and that they could send my laptop to their offices in Kentucky and use advance data retrieval techniques but it would cost me anywhere between $400 – $1600. Ugh.
So I posted my no-so-rant on Twitter.
I just finished reading, “Digg is Not Social Media Marketing” and I’d have to agree that using Digg alone is not social media marketing. While this may be an important tactic in the overall scheme of things, there is much more to social media than Digg. And, It is quite apparent that many marketers spend a considerable amount of time trying to game the Digg algorithm, grow their friend’s list, and seed content in hopes of achieving front page placement.
Read this eBook now – Customer Service: The Art of Listening and Engagement through Social Media – written by Brian Solis. You can download for free (PDF or Word). It’s short, sweet and gets straight to the point.
One of the key takeaways was what many refer to as conversational marketing. Here is Brian’s take from the eBook (page 6):
However, marketing needs to be clarified as I am not referring to the traditional marketing that typically “speaks” at people through “messages.” In Social Media, this is about dialog, two way discussions that bring people together in order to discover and share information.
I wholeheartedly agree that participation through two-way conversations is a form of marketing; and I would argue that it’s probably one of the most effective methods of marketing today. As Brian suggests, consumers don’t want marketed to anymore. They are sick and tired of us (yeah, me too) shoving [...]
