Corporate Blogging: listen, learn, engage...

BREAKING NEWS: Corporate America agrees that social media is essential to successfully communicating (and engaging consumers with) your brand in today's ever-changing global marketplace.

As consumers become more diverse, demanding, and connected than ever before, it's important for firms to understand the global trends and local conditions that define their environment (and the consumer's too!).

The new marketplace is now being defined in consumer terms. As such, blogs are an important tool in this new two-way communications world. With traditional media such as newspapers appearing to be that of Neanderthals (my apologies to the Geico cavemen), brands now use blogs to tell their story. And more importantly, they CONTROL the content.

However, just as important, firms cannot miss out on the CONVERSATION part. Blogging, or social media in general, is another promotional platform but it is as much about listening as it is about publishing content. Firms must understand that in order to catch the attention of their target audience, they need to be informative (or even entertaining), engaging, and true to the brands they represent.

Blogs. Facebook. Twitter. Flickr. Digg. YouTube. They're all great communications and marketing tools but they must be used efficiently. Firms should not SPAM social media, it will backfire. Instead, prioritize your efforts on sites where your audience may be looking for you and integrate/connect these back to your blog. This way, the brand message will be more authentic and meaningful to the consumer.


Articles:

Beckford, Avil. On Corporate Blogging: Interview with Don Martelli of MS&L. November 9, 2009.

Brogan, Chris. Shut Up - You're Helping the Customer! November 4, 2008.

Image from Savage Brands.

Crowdsourcing: a misconception...

According to Jeff Howe, crowdsourcing is "the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.“

Its simplicity lies in the fact that you ask those in your network to help you out and therefore you tap into their collective (network's) intelligence resulting in the by-passing of expensive third party vendors/consultants. With more and more people logging onto the internet and using social media everyday, this was bound to happen.

However, quantity may not always relate to quality. Putting yourself out there to the wrong audience won't lead you to gather great insights. Instead, crowdsourcing may be just the tip of the iceberg, perhaps a testing ground or starting point to narrowing your target audience.

"We need to nurture and fund inventors and give them time to explore, play and fail. A false idea of the crowd reduces the motivation for this investment, with the supposition that companies can tap the minds of inventors on the cheap." (Woods, Dan. The Myth of Crowdsourcing)

For in-depth analysis and valuable insights, companies need to develop relationships and engage with the RIGHT audience that will lead to their PARTICIPATION in the process. That'll be the differentiating factor between firms that are merely data collectors and those that see the inventors in the outside world as a their partners.


Articles:

Howe, Jeff. Crowdsourcing. Youtube.

Woods, Dan. The Myth of Crowdsourcing. Forbes.com

Image from: Social Signal

Real? Virtual? ... Both?

Mark Zuckerberg, in a post on his Facebook blog, states that "when we started Facebook in 2004, it was just a basic directory with some names, interests, contact information and a profile picture." Fast forward to 2009, we now have "the wall" and "live feeds" that put all of our "friends" right in our face.

On the other hand, Clive Thompson, recounts the differences between real-world social networks and virtual ones through the study of reality mining. Apparently, scientists are tracking people using location-aware devices like mobile phones or electronic badges to figure out how social networks function in the real wold. Really?? Am I in a lab and don't know it?? Not surprisingly, results show that the real world often works very differently than the virtual world thanks to that old tradition of face-to-face interaction.

Here's my problem: FB isn't just a basic directory anymore. I don't want the power to share EVERYTHING and I don't want to connect with EVERYONE. (baby announcements, the exact street address of where you will be at from 5-7 pm tonight, how you feel about Obama being left-handed, etc.)

Improving my ability to share and connect online also means improving security and privacy measures that allow us to do so in our own terms. Whether it's live feeds on FB or reality mining in the real world, why do I want others gathering so much data about me and vice versa? What's left to talk about if we know everything about everyone? (clients, bosses, love interests, etc.) We might as well just become robots. Wait for it...

I love spontaneity and so should you, it's what keeps us on our toes and makes life interesting. While FB (and YouTube, etc.) has proven to be many great things, like mapping our social network, it has also negatively altered our real world expectations. In the real world, you don't just earn someone's trust and friendship because your FB status is the same or you follow the same people. A firm handshake, eye contact, and credibility will always triumph in the world I live, which makes me wonder: am I the only one still living here? I guess the term "double life" changed from personal/professional to real/virtual.

First blog post...ever!!

So here I am, almost 28 years into my life and thanks to the $3k I'm paying per MBA class, finally getting around to writing my first blog.

With that said, let me clarify once again that I am a student blogging for a class and, as such, am obliged to include the academic integrity pledge “On my honor, all posts on this blog are my own.”

Without further ado, let's assess the situation.