Spent Saturday afternoon at a think tank put on by the Research Foundation of the International Association of Business Communicators, who’ve just begun their World Conference. As 30 of us gathered at the San Francisco Hilton, organizer Shel Holtz said that this was the first IABC think tank convened around a single topic: social media.
The participants offered a number of ideas around social media for the Research Foundation to study in the coming years, around customer support and problem-solving; issues of access and availability; enterprise decision-making; the flattening of corporate hierarchies and the implications of democratic decision-making at large companies; evangelizing (making the tools available) vs. proselytizing (imposing them on a culture) in different societies around the globe; and the barriers that may result from government regulation that prevents companies from participating in conversations, such as the FDA in the pharmaceutical sector, the SEC in the financial sector and FCC in telecom.
Some other notable contributions from throughout the day:
• Giovanni Rodriguez, a founding fellow of Society for New Communication Rsearch (as am I) and managing partner of the Conversation Group, urged the group to think beyond the tools to deeper notions of social engagement and influence marketing.
• Chris Heuer, chief founder of AdHocnium and the Social Media Club, also urged the participants to address new ways of strategic thinking throughout the top layers of corporate culture.
• More Chris Heuer, citing a recent meme playing off companies’ insistence on a return on investment: “What’s the return on ignoring? What’s the return for not doing anything?”
• Ezri Carlebach of Lifelong Learning UK: “Marshall McLuhan’s theories apply so much now in the era of Facebook and Twitter than it did with TV in his day.”
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
Hi,
Thanks for sharing the discussion.
Personally I feel that social media is god for businesses. as it has certain tools that help connect companies and customers. Tools like Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites have evolved from being merely the latest annoying fads to nearly essential tools for social and professional networking.
Here is the contribution from my side on social media. The link also has a good video on social media for brands and businesses.
http://www.webguild.org/2009/06/howard-greenstein…
I'm only just now learning about social media, and am a little bit weary about using this communication channel for selling to and manipulating consumers. But if social media can be used for making people more aware of products (say, environmentally conscious products), it can be a good thing. I think the most important aspect about all this is the idea of social media being a "conversation" …the audience gets involved. This is what I'm learning,, the more I read about it.
http://bloggingforreal.com