DISQUS

CB... This is great stuff.... maybe companies should spend a couple of hundred bucks and arm their favorite customers with cameras to spread their message real time.....rather than wasting huge amounts on social media ads that don't work.....thanks again.

Engagement is a hard item to track... and I agree it is all about the conversation. The problem with the conversation trackers (buzz trackers) is that they are following frequency of mention not engagement. Frequency of mentions really are the loudest person in the room the problem is compounded by the speed at which User Generated Content is being created, more UGC will be created in the next two years than all content that has ever existed. I see engagement measurement being made up of two elements, interactions (we used to call this the click stream, but now it is broader because social is no longer about walled gardens) and influence....how influential is the person performing those interactions. There is little doubt that engagement makes sense for measuring social interactions and will become the new measure... it will take one major advertiser to switch to that metric...getting that one major advertiser will require more than traditional metrics...it will require customer intelligence

having a campaigning process and then an election process might work-- oh wait that has its issues as well. How about we have the public select-- maybe use a social network like IT Toolbox to have the voting and interviewing done.

as I like to say-- social media is customer created and company consumed but traditional media is company created and customer consumed. The web 2.0 approach for advertisers is being able to track the engagement outside of the walled gardens-- as customers/consumers do not see the walls-- they go to the places they want to. Being able to look across the walls is a key component to engagement advertising. Additionally-- you hit the nail on the head when you talk about authenticity-- in order for engagement based advertising to be super effective, it needs to be contextualized around the social elements of the engagement for example what are people discussing, who is rating reading and sharing.

Great post!!

Thanks

I am a big fan of keeping it simple, start with some yes and no's to get them warmed up then move to POV oriented questions and I am a big fan of ending with "is there anything you would have expected me to ask that I did not"-- if there are some awkward questions sometimes self deprication can help in that you expose a little of yourself so they will be more open with you. Making the interviewee know some of your foibles allows them to really open up.

Just my POV.

you single handedly took the site down!!! Now I have to imagine your photosynth does that make it a "virtual photosynth"

I find many companies are guided by their agencies who have been used to the shout-- which as you point out is often the reason the descriptive/creative gets exaggerated. Too often companies are looking to control which leads to something other than the truth. It is hard for companies to think about ways they can be informed by their customers rather than them informing the customer. Understanding social media at a contextual level is hard from companies to embrace, because as one exec shared "its spinning out of our control" yes-- but how do you engage in a way your customers want.

Truth, authenticity and honesty all resonate in the language used by companies-- having a way for them to get insight on the language to use is key-- the language problem reminds me of the lyrics in the men at work song "Down Under" do you speak my language-- she just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich. The she is the company in this metaphor simply smiling and trying to do what they want to do.

Thanks for the post-- great stuff.

It has become really interesting and with access ubiquity it has become even more difficult to have control over the approval process. I was meeting with a company this past week and they started talking to me about my broken laptop (which I had tweeted about) and the company I had just visited who they felt was a competitor. More twitter like approaches are emerging and reality is controlling access to information is becoming more difficult. However for companies need to figure out ways to look across social media and find the right set of users to engage with. That engagement needs to based in trust and authenticity. my $.02

Thanks for the post Kristen. I understand your concerns about privacy, and much like Facebook, we pride ourselves on making clear to customers that they are free to share as much or as little information as they want with the rest of the network and/or the company. We call this progressive disclosure. We understand that privacy within social media is an important issue for people, and we wanted to make sure to put ownership and control of that data in the customers’ hands.

I agree, it’s a shame that more large companies do not take advantage of having a blog or social media aspect on their websites. There IS a “Generation Gap,” and many companies, large and small, have a hard time investing in social media even though the return can be so great in value. The key is to put the consumers in control — if companies really don’t have the time, resources or desire to launch a blog, they should implement something simple that allows for conversation and networking among their customers and let them take control of WOM.