Social Media -- Marketing “Campaigns” or Collaborations

[#1]

Earlier this month I read a great article, The 4 Fail Whales of Social Media Marketing, authored by Lauren McKay, in destinationCRM.com.  It is no surprise I have revisited this article a few times to reflect on the advice Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang), Charlene Li (@charleneli), and Peter Kim (@peterkim) shared with attendees of the Web 2.0 Expo.

The 4 Fail Whales include:

1. "Social media doesn’t match up with our corporate culture"
2. "My social media marketing campaigns aren’t working"
3. "I don’t know how to measure this stuff"
4. "I’m not sure social media matters anyway"

With my primary focus on our community, I appreciate that Charlene Li stressed that social media isn’t about marketing campaigns and is about building relationships with customers and collaborating.   And, I had to agree with her insight that businesses need to change relationships not only with customers, but with employees and external constituents as well.  How is your business culture changing?  Have you made change within your organization to embrace this philosophy?  And, are you using any measurement tools that provide feedback on sentiment? 

In the ACT! community, we are working on a new forum, Ideas Exchange, where you are invited to share your product and service ideas with us.  Currently, we receive product enhancements requests through several channels, including:  support, email, conference sessions, Webcasts, partner newsgroups, and conversations with our partners and customers.  With Ideas Exchange, your ideas become more than a suggestion.  Your ideas will spark other passionate community members to add, refine, and sometimes challenge entries, resulting in the best possible improvements.  As a member, your contribution is invaluable, as you will inspire change and even vote on the ideas that best support your business growth and success.  This is exciting stuff, and we can't wait to learn about your ideas.

McKay, L. (2009). The 4 Fail Whales of Social Media Marketing. destinationCRM.com.

[#2]

Kim,

I've posted some thoughts on this to my blog:

http://blog.glcomputing.com.au/2009/05/social-media-marketing-campaigns-or.html

Regards,

Mike Lazarus

ACT! Evangelist

[#3]

Mike,

For some reason I can't open your page in IE, but it did load fine in FireFox. I just went back to revisit your comments because I was trying to remember where I read Return on Involvement (ROI).  I love it.

And, I was recently discussing how sentiment can be skewed by sarcasm.  Naturally, being the sarcastic person I am, I can see me writing a review  that would be confusing to any listening software.  For example, "This service was great if you like waiting for you meal for 2 hours and getting a steak when you ordered fish!"  Many of the listening software applications would view this as a good comment.  It will be interesting to watch these tools evolve.  This is an exciting time!

[#4]

What version of IE? I'll have a look at it.

[#5]

On IE v7.0.5 and 7.0.6 64 bit it opens the page and gives a error message "operation aborted" and looks like it is painting the right panels at the time of the message.

[#6]

I've just found the error... works first load in IE8, but fails on a refresh.

Not sure of the cause yet, but working on it.

Nice that Firefox has no issue - faster, more secure, more stable

Reminds me of the 90s, when web designers would put a log to show if the site was better in IE or Netscape and what screen resolution. I spent I while getting it right on both and created this:

Best viewed using your eyes and a computer

It's still on the Wayback Machine from 97 :-)

[#7]

Thanks Mike.  I hear you loud an clear.  BTW, viewing in Firefox.