Social Networking: What It's Changed
This happens to me every so often, and when it does, I’m always a little awestruck. It goes like this: It’s nearly noon, I’m trolling the web, hitting my usual list of blogs, sifting through my RSS reader and sending the occasional email while finishing lunch (a superb salad from Chop’t, if anyone’s curious). I consume a lot of content during these casual strolls across the web, and most of it barely registers. I glance over a few lines of text, I smile or furrow my brow, and I move on. In these moments, the fact that 99.99999 percent of the content I take in is free makes perfect sense to me.
But sometimes, like today, I cross something so clear and cogent, that I have to stop and give thanks for the awesome power of the internet. And all of it for free! Oh, world wide web, how did we exist without you?
Without further hyping, I give you the above mentioned clear-and-cogent-thinking-that-made-me-stop-and-think. It’s a short presentation from Shiv Singh, VP of Global Social Media at Razorfish. It’s a genuinely worthwhile look at the evolution of the social networking universe — and what is means for the future of brands. The major take-away may not come as a shock to most. Essentially, Singh echoes what many of us in the marketing universe have been saying of late: that social networking means that communication has to be a two-way street between brands and consumers. It may be an old-news message, but the context Singh provides is really valuable. So read it, and then take its message to heart and start interacting in an authentic way with your consumers.
Meghan Stuyvenberg
February 26th, 2009
at 11:31 pm
Thanks for sharing this, it is a great presentation. Clear and simple messages.
I hope that as we proponents of social media continue to have these conversations with the organisations we work for and with, we may see more action and as you state actually begin to interact in authentic ways with our customers, employees and stakeholders.
I recently commented in my blog that potentially not until GenY is running agencies and maybe even major corporations will we see this genuine, 2-way conversation (or is a 3-way or even multi-channel conversation with brands?) really impacting marketing and business strategies. There are surely some best-practice examples of those doing it now, but despite how quickly the environment is changing, it is taking a lot longer to make the transition.