The update. Forrester Research releases an update today to Groundswell, which continues to serve many marketers as a how-to guide for thinking through social business. Groundswell is now available in paperback and contains two new chapters: “tapping the groundswell with twitter” and “attaining social maturity.” I was an analyst at Forrester when the book was …
Category Archives: Strategy
Separate content from platforms
When it comes to social media, content and platform usually find themselves lumped together in the earned media category. A better approach for brands lies in separating platform strategy and content planning.
Why fail fast is bad advice
Every now and then, we all get involved in a conversation that's already in progress. Most people will listen and ask questions to establish context and meaning. Without comprehension, remarks can be misconstrued and advice misapplied. A popular piece of advice in social media is "fail fast." Or even extended to "fail fast, fail forward, …
got social strategy?
A majority of companies now have social strategies in place. Or maybe a minority. Does it matter?
Aggregate or be aggregated
An idea has been floating around in my head ever since we began working with Workstreamer. Or maybe not just an idea as much as the seed for a manifesto. Perhaps just a strategic principle. Aggregate or be aggregated. It’s been bugging me for months, with roots in the portal wars of the mid-1990s. At …
Comments on The Next Digital Era
I'll be in New York mid-week to moderate a PR Week conference panel and asked for your thoughts on the content. Thanks to everyone who contributed! Here are highlights from your responses. 1. What's next for the communications industry? A mobile, sematic web and the personalisation of data. - Ubergill Social media fatigue, large-scale burnout as …
PR Week: The Next Digital Era
Next week, I'll be in New York to attend PR Week's "The Next Conference," described as a one-day summit on the most important trends in PR. Edelman has invited me to participate and I'll be moderating a panel called "The Next Digital Era," which includes Steve Rubel from Edelman Digital, Mark Donovan from comScore, and …
BzzAgent: Is WOM a Form of Social Media?
The word-of-mouth experts over at BzzAgent have taken an idea of mine and run with it. Which I love, because it helps shed light on how to make the prior work even better. A couple months ago, I posted a framework for measuring social media. BzzAgent has taken the concept and published some thoughts on …
How to set an ego trap
I’ve been thinking lately about what I call the social media ego trap. In a nutshell, social technologies use game mechanics to get users hooked on participation. People often get addicted to ego-stroking system feedback, until they can temper their usage (addiction?) in terms of utility vs. serendipity. But what if you’ve got something to …
Why social media sites want “users,” not just “customers”
What if you own and operate a social media property, like recent commentor C.H. Low of Orbius? Well, it’s true that people will always be “people.” But owner/operators are actually looking for “users.” Some people detest the term user, but the analogy fits. O’Reilly’s Jimmy Guterman blogs, “…there are only two industries that refer to …
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