11 responses to “The art of being useful: social media optimisation”
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Trying to apply a social and economic model to social networks (after Mayfield)
Antony Mayfield has an excellent as ever post on Social Network Optimisation over at his Open blog. I’ve long been thinking about networks and the way they’re used in terms of PR but couldn’t quite put my finger on how
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One of the things I’ve been talking to Danny Bradbury (www.itjournalist.com) about is whether Social Media is the right term.
I’m coming to the conclusion that perhaps it needs tweaking to be ‘socialised’ media – the ability to interrupt the monologue through the ability to participate in the creation of the story/meme.
This participation allows for the engagment of multiple parties in the creation of the story regardless of the power:truth ratio. Along with another colleague, the socialised media is impacting on the traditional organisation, making it essential that the brand becomes the socialised brand – the co-creation of the meaning of the brand by its customers.
The statement about usefulness above then becomes ‘if your brand is relevant to the network, then the network is relevant to your brand’ and explains why it’s essential that organisations participate in an appropriate manner through this socialised media…
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Is social media already too widely used for us to hope to usefully tweak the phrase now?
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Great thoughts – this linguistic battle is especially apparent when you consider the dual meanings of “social marketing” and how this can’t be the term that applies to marketing relating to “social media.” I personally would love to find a term that works better. I have seen personal media, new media, and consumer generated content/media emerging as the most frequently used apart from social media. Personal media is the one I use most often, though it’s not ideal.
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Connected media or networked media works for me, personally, but I will always try to use the description that most people will have heard of and undeerstand. Social media seems to be that phrase at the moment.
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Important and useful – thanks Antony.
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Understanding Social Media Optimisation
Antony Mayfield has written a must-read overview on a new emerging meme known as Social Media Optimisation. Read it if: You are in brand management, marketing, PR or communications You work in or are passionate about the juxtaposition of the
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I think “socialised media” would create the impression that it is some sort of left wing enclave, given that socialism has been a political movement for a long time.
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Great post. And I’ll say that all the points you’ve made that address initiatives I’ve already undertaken have worked well. I’ve found my fellow PR bloggers to be incredibly generous. It’s hard not to try to return that generosity as best I can.
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Antony,
I think you make some really good points here and raise some potentially exciting and troubling questions for any company trying to find its place in the changing Internet.
Fundamentally the greatest challenge has to be how you weave a corporation into a social network. The obvious answer will be through the voices of employees who understand and may already be part of that network.
Hence it might be that you need more junior level employees who understand why MySpace matters and respect its culture to help a company establish a place and a voice in the network.
Or you’ll need creatives who are already producing for YouTube to be able to command a corporate presence there.
The key to social media/networks is authenticity as you know and write about eloquently. Damage that trust and all the social media software in the world won’t boost your reputation with today’s consumers.
I’m really interested in your final point about how people will be using social networks as a parralel form of search.
As we gear up for our next conference and we start formulating the must cover themes, it seems obvious to me that the power of social networking and the bundling of blogging, sharing and ordering within greater communities is going to be a major theme.
Sorry it took me so long to drop my thoughts in on this!
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Thanks, Matthew – your considered comments are very welcome indeed! Look forward to hearing about he outline for the B4B conference, the last one was truly excellent.
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