Surviving, and thriving in this wired up world

August 13th, 2009

Early this year, I co-wrote a book called Social Media Marketing: How Data Analytics helps to monetize the User Base in Telecoms, Social Networks, Media and Advertising in a Converged Ecosystem. (Futuretext 2009).

This book is important because, the 4 co-authors all come from different, but increasingly overlapping worlds of marketing, media, data analytics and the mobile-web. The rules of marketing are currently being re-written, and I would like to think we are part of that debate.

Our foreword begins:

MARKETS ARE CONVERSATIONS: When Doc Searls wrote those words 10 years ago, few truly understood the full dramatic extent of his observation. Yet in a recent 2008 report Nokia noted that 25% of all media will be created by us by 2012. And coupled with that we see the creation of data flows exploding from 161 billion gigabytes in 2006 to 988 billion gbs by 2012. YouTube uploads 20 hours of audio-visual content every 60 seconds of every day of the year. That’s a lot of data. We no longer live in a society governed by the simple rules of mass media, nor by the frameworks that apply to mass media production, dissemination and economics. We live in a networked society, where we, the people formerly known as the audience, are now the media. The pressure this has brought to bear on the entire economics of the media, marketing and advertising industries has become acute.

In 2005, when Alan co-authored ‘Communities Dominate Brands’, he described at length the challenges brought about by digital economics. He discussed the generation dubbed Generation-C, the community generation. The generation that has grown up connected and socially networked, wanting to engage and participate, to create and co-create. He pointed to the role data, and more importantly social marketing intelligence, the Black Gold of the 21st Century would play in this wired up “we media” world.

Three years on, “Social Media”, or “Social Media Networking”, accompanied by the 2.0 moniker have become familiar, if misunderstood terms. Inaccurately, the terms have become almost synonymous with enormous sites like My Space and Facebook. This is not what we mean by ‘Social Media’. We mean any media form that links people and communities – including many smaller sites, mobile internet services and telephony.

The digitally networked visitor to these social media forms leaves behind the footprints, shadows and trails of his or her individual and collective endeavours in the form of data; data that enables new type of marketing and communications between and within consumer communities. The challenge now is to harness those data flows and make money from them. Whilst also being cognisant of the fact that the power relationships between brands and their customers has evolved. It offers opportunities for businesses to rethink hw they find, attract and retain valued customer relationships. Misuse becomes invavsive, good use becomes value and more relevant and intmate communications – that leads to commercial activity.

This interview, provides some of the key issues raised by the book

Thus, instead of having one large ‘broadcast’ campaign – we have many small narrowcast, interactive and ongoing campaigns. The campaigns and conversations are based on a feedback loop, hence they are iterative and form an ongoing learning experience.

Bookmarks: