Matt Hamm
There have been lots of events, seminars and conferences over the past few months and I have attended or participated in a few of them. There is huge interest from businesses and marketeers, to explore if they can get an edge by using some of these new tools.
At one of these, Futureproof, we had Loren Feldman (1938media) taking the keynote slot to rant about social media, challenging many of the speakers from earlier in the day that the tools and technology of social media are bullshit. As to be expected, a few other profanities were thrown in to make his take interesting and entertaining, if not informing. But it is good to hear the challenge that it’s all bullshit - but what he was really saying was that connecting with your customers is an attitude and the tools are irrelevant. I agree with that, and he used an nice analogy of his grandfather who built up his “gas” station business by looking after his customers.
This got me thinking a little, as so often the questions being asked are about technologies - should I use twitter, facebook etc? Having now delivered lots of presentations and overviews about social media, I agree with much of the sentiment of Feldman’s talk - with the exception that Internet monitoring tools are for absolutely every business. Using twitter, blogs, facebook (and IGOpeople) etc. will definitely be suited to some types of business and marketeer more than others. Some will never need to create a twitter account or a blog. But all businesses should be listening to what is being said - about their brand, products and services and competitors. Why would you not want to know what people are saying? What are their needs, what is their attitude towards your product, your customer service, your pricing, your competitors. And the good news is it’s all so easy, to set up some keyword monitoring and notification.
So I think social media is for everyone - if only to listen.
I’ll blog a little more about which businesses can benefit from social media. There is research which shows the degree to which users engage in the Internet (Forrester, sociotechnographics) and I think the same model applies to businesses - some will be publishers and get involved in conversations - others will just listen.
