experience matters

I attended OMMA Social last week and it took me a few days to organize all of the information by sifting through all my tweets and mobile notes. For those of you that didn’t attend, I’m creating this thread in 3 posts.  The Present, The Future, and How do We Get There?

 The Present: We all agree that we’ve talked about it long enough. It’s time to get our hands dirty. There are 2 main themes that I saw coming out of the conference:

 #1. The economy doesn’t mean cut social spending. If anything gets cut, it surely shouldn’t be social. 

• Peer-reviews and WOM influence purchase now more than ever. Forrester, eMarketer and Jupiter are all singing the same social praises. Consumers are using peers to research before buying.
• Only 15% of the top Fortune 500 brands are participating in social. Get in before it gets more cluttered and fragmented.
• If nothing else, listen to the insights and measure paid media impact through social graphing and analysis. You can also use it to understand how you stack up to your competition.
• While they are pricey, there are tools that can help you track your social share of voice, traffic and ecommerce conversions. The key is to use them efficiently.  Pull information that helps shape flexible creative messaging and ongoing distribution strategies.
• Other budgets should make the sacrifice.  If 8 out of 10 holiday shoppers read web reviews, then we’ve identified triggers for conversion.  Cut spending in places where we can’t track those conversions in this economy.

 

 #2. It’s a grab bag for ownership and accountability. There are a number of options for marketers, you’ll find them below, with my opinion on each.

• Consultants: Social Media “Gurus.” This group is the most flexible, in terms of fitting into a marketing process.  However, many have very limited experience in building brands vs. building themselves in the social space.  Be warned, if their only recommendation is to engage community managers, your social outreach will not go far.  Influential marketing is a part of a larger ecosystem of options and opportunities, don’t let ‘experts’ build you another silo.
• Publishers: Content Aggregators. The great news is that they hold ton’s of data about their communities and they’re able to help you find the trees within the forest. Be careful not to put all effort into one platform.  If you do, you’ll risk learning about social mapping and limit where consumers distribute within their own social webs.
• Agencies: Traditional, digital, PR. Agencies that are best equipped to handle influential marketing need to be rooted in solid strategies made to solve business problems. Their media buying and creative process can slow-down the time to get to market, but if you have (or you are) and agency that helps solve business problems rather than just pushing messages.

 

 

 

Last 5 posts by Heidi Skinner

• Trusting Edelman Buzz? – February 23rd, 2010
• Someone Stole My Bike… An Extraordinary Experience. – September 1st, 2009
• Twitterific SEO Checklist – August 5th, 2009
• Best Wishes, David Armano – April 9th, 2009
• OMMA Social Part 2: The Future – February 19th, 2009

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