Guest Post by Tom O’Brien
Two weeks ago I was on a panel for the AC Nielsen Center for Marketing Research at UW talking about social media and market research to executives from Wal-Mart, General Mills, Kraft, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson and 50 or so others. I was asked to share some lessons learned about SM – from the perspective of a brand marketer.
Here are my lessons learned personally and professionally over the last 10 years of heavy involvement in this space.
1. What people say to each other is more important than what we say to them.
2. People no longer rely on brands for information.
3. Advocates are more important than influencers.
4. Brand mentions are just the tip of the iceberg – somewhere between 5% and 30% of the relevant category conversation. You should listen to the whole conversation.
5. If you want to participate be helpful, human and humble.
6. When you participate, put the community’s interests & motivations first.
7. Connect to existing passion, don’t just make stuff up.
8. If you want new ideas, look beyond your category.
9. Brand advocacy is the most important metric today – are people recommending your brand to others.
Of course I could elaborate – for a LONG time on each of these, but I think you will get the gist.
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Tom O’Brien is CMO at MotiveQuest LLC He also writes for A Human Voice. You can find him on Twitter as TomOB
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Yeah, Tom. Those points are familiar and could take volumes to explain and discuss. Hope we get to have that conversation one day soon. Thank you!
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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