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

The software industry and its acolytes have always fascinated me - even moreso as some of its fundamental tenets are challenged. So it was with great interest that I read Gartner's take on so-called "social software". And to be truthful, I was pleasantly surprised with the clarity of their analysis. Afterall, this is an emerging market dominated by the behaviour of that most unpredictable stakeholder - you & I - in our various social guises of customer, employee etc....

A popular way of constructing social media / Word of Mouth marketing campaigns is to first seek out and recruit consumers with large social networks. The implicit assumption seems to be that someone with 500 Facebook friends will spread your marketing message more effectively than someone with 100.

An explosive mix of social media, online communities, text analytics & visualisation technologies together with Net Promoter Score (NPS) programs is presenting marketers with the opportunity to deliver on the type of Customer Relationship Management vision promised 10-15 years ago. In my humble opinion of course... but as practitioners, we are now seeing some of the more innovative companies closing in on this position.

With the fundamental and relentless changes occurring in the marketing landscape, it is interesting to see how this plays out in "agency land". You may have seen some of the video portrayals - both insightful and amusing:

"Reach over 350 million active users on Facebook. Learn how to connect your business with real customers through Facebook Ads" - so goes the Facebook online pitch.

From a marketing viewpoint, when you look at the large public social sites such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter - are you just looking at traditional mass media advertising applied to a new channel?

The great challenge for contemporary marketing is summed up very nicely in Rethinking Marketing (Harvard Business Review, Jan 2010):

'Never before have companies had such powerful technologies for interacting directly with customers, collecting and mining information about them and tailoring their offerings accordingly.

And never before have customers expected to interact so deeply with companies, and each other, to shape the products and services they use.'