SXSW social media marketing

On the 14th March I shall be speaking at SXSW - in fact doing a book reading

The reading wil be based upon the key topics of a recent book that I co-authored Social Media Marketing

Just a bit of background

‘Social Media Marketing’ is the start of a conversation about marketing communications using social media forms – including internet spaces and platforms and mobile telecommunication sources. The book addresses the importance of data and analytics both in helping to monetise these media, and in improving the way that the owners of these media market themselves. Marketers wishing to communicate with customers, or potential customers via social media need to adopt a new set of skills and techniques to be effective. The need for dialogue and involvement, for engagement, is paramount. This book helps the advance understanding and use of social media.

The book introduces the concepts such as: of the Networked Society, the explosion of data, active digital footprints and 3D-profiling via analysing large data flows, privacy, a new set of metrics (CPRA), case studies on social media marketing that have brought real commercial benefits, accountability and ROI.

Excerpt from book...

Markets are conversations

When Doc Searls wrote those words 10 years ago, few truly understood the full dramatic extent of his observation. Yet in a recent 2008 report Nokia noted that 25% of all media will be created by us by 2012.  And coupled with that we see the creation of data flows exploding from 161 billion gigabytes in 2006 to 988 billion gbs by 2012.  YouTube uploads 7 hours of audio- visual content every 60 seconds of every day of the year. That’s a lot of data.

We no longer live in a society governed by the simple rules of mass media, nor by the frameworks that apply to mass media production, dissemination and economics. We live in a networked society, where we, the people formerly known as the audience, are now the media. The pressure this has brought to bear on the entire economics of the media, marketing and advertising industries has become acute.

In 2005, when Alan co-authored ‘Communities Dominate Brands’, he described at length the challenges brought about by digital economics. He discussed the generation dubbed Generation-C, the community generation. The generation that has grown up connected and socially networked, wanting to engage and participate, to create and co-create. He pointed to the role data, and more importantly social marketing intelligence, the Black Gold of the 21st Century would play in this wired up “we media” world.

Three years on, “Social Media”, or “Social Media Networking”, accompanied by the 2.0 moniker have become familiar, if misunderstood terms. Inaccurately, the terms have become almost synonymous with enormous sites like My Space and Facebook. This is not what we mean by ‘Social Media’. We mean any media form that links people and communities – including many smaller sites, mobile internet services and telephony.

The digitally networked visitor to these social media forms leaves behind the footprints, shadows and trails of his or her individual and collective endeavours in the form of data; data that enables new type of marketing and communications between and within consumer communities. The challenge now is to harness those data flows and make money from them.

This book is interested in marketing communication from a social media perspective, and in the data and analytics (from online and from mobile telecommunications sources) that allow us the opportunity to improve that process. But unlike other books this book, like the topic itself, is a work in progress. Thus the copy you’re holding has no pretentions to be the definitive article, the one true answer to all questions on social media marketing.

Rather, we would like you to see this as the start of what we hope will be an engaging conversation. As a good friend once said, people will talk about you whether you like it or not, so you might as well join in the conversation.

Antti Öhrling in his foreword to the book writes...

The concept of simple marketing - a phrase I use here to describe the classical view towards marketing taught by many scholars even today – is permanently over. Simple marketers apply a broadcasting mindset to marketing: We as the brand have something very important to sell and you as consumers are our “target audience”, which we segment in various ways. We then bombard you with our messages, sliced and diced in bite-sized pieces to match your purchasing drivers.  We measure your awareness and preferences, plan media spending carefully to optimise your exposure to our message (just the right dose, thank you!), take samples to understand what is moving inside your head (we call it market insight), tweak our value propositions or make cosmetic product face-lifts to fight off parity performance, determine various price points that open your wallets, select the best distribution channels to reach you as we see fit… we’ll do nearly anything to get your attention and make you buy our product or service. Anything but engage you in a dialogue with us, as we would not know how to conduct millions of conversations simultaneously.

So come along and perhaps you too could be part of the conversation!

Comments

[kiran]

Good one on social media marketing...Thank u.