There have been a string of high profile social media disasters lately, which is not surprising with more and more businesses embracing social media, but it highlights the issue of how important it is to learn from our mistakes. This got me thinking about my ultimate social media no-nos.

The continued obsession with social media channels like Facebook, Google+ and Twitter makes it easy to overlook the role of content marketing in your brand’s customer engagement activities. Using these channels to start a conversation with customers is an important first step but the novelty can soon wear off if you stop feeding your customers a regular diet of quality content that draws people in and keeps them coming back. A good digital marketer knows how to develop content that serves a human need, solves a problem or inspires passion.
 

Having spent the first 10 years of my career working in Direct Marketing, I am well versed in the idea of marketing as a campaign. 

The process is:

1. Client briefs agency “we need to sell 2,000 mortgages this quarter”
2. Creative staff work on the design and data planners work back from that 2,000 figure (with expected response rates and conversion rates) to identify how many prospects need to be contacted/exposed to the ad.  If they are more sophisticated, they will have data (triggers, profiles and predictive models) to help them identify the best prospects.
3. Campaign is launched and after a period of time, the number of new mortgages is calculated
4. The agency can calculate the ROI from the campaign and then rest easy with a G&T at the nearest swanky bar

In exactly one month I will be off on a 4 week trip around South-East Asia with my partner. We’ll be covering 3 countries (Cambodia, Laos & Vietnam) and stopping in at least 8 different places which means a whole lot of hotels, transport, tours & activities to be organised.

My first big overseas trip was about 7 years ago, a 3 month stint in South America, and back then most of my travel planning was done by consulting my trusty Lonely Planet guide. Things have certainly changed over the past few years and while I’m still not ready to ditch the Lonely Planet guide, most of my planning for this trip has been through social networks.

Facebook has once again raised the ire of privacy advocates with the wider roll-out of facial recognition software that invites people to tag photos of their friends in the wildly popular social network.
 

I am sure you all read recently of the $6 billion bid from Google to the 'group discount local buying' online community called 'Groupon', as in 'Group', 'Coupon'.

The world of the market researcher has been challenged by the social media phenomenon. That's the polite interpretation. "Turned upside down" is probably closer to the mark. The ability for more research to be done, more quickly and less expensively with willing online participants seems irresistible and often makes traditional research look, well, just irrelevant. So it is not surprising that we have seen traditional market researchers bunker down into a defensive position.

As practitioners in the customer feedback game, we are only too aware of customer voices falling on deaf ears. And with the explosion of social media the imbalance between "user generated content" vs "enterprise generated action" has become the herculean challenge. Which is why any mechanism that enables an organisation to listen more effectively is, well frankly, gold.

This TED talk, Listening to Global Voices by Ethan Zuckerman is something of wake-up call. It is very easy for us - especially the digital us - to imagine that a global internet infrastructure means that we are all somehow automatically connected and gaining a broader worldview.

Resonate is pleased to announce the appointment of Darren Sharp as Senior Consultant, Community Management. Darren brings with him years of consulting and research experience in social media, online communities and user-led innovation. He has been particularly active most recently in the Gov 2.0 space working with a range of high-profile public sector clients on community engagement projects. Over to Darren who'd like to share his thoughts on some of the latest news related to customer co-creation activities. Jeff