One of the things that really caught me with the YouTube videos we watched for this week was the focus on the social media community. One of the portions of the "An anthropological introduction to YouTube" has a man talking about how Youtube helped him get through his grief over losing his son. In Harry, A History, a book on the Harry Potter phenomenon, author Melissa Anelli discusses the trial she faced during the tragedy of 9/11. The first tower has been hit and Melissa doesn't know if her sister made it out of the building. In her anxiety, she turns to the Harry Potter community she has become a part of and explains her worry with them. She is flooded with messages of well wishes and she feels connected and comforted by them. The community helped pull her through the difficult time.
I think the power of social media communities is important to realize. People connect and they stay connected. They rely on each other and support each other in countless ways, emotionally as well as intellectually. And I think that should mean a lot to marketers. Online communities can be solid and unwavering, which makes them ideal as target audiences.
Gillin mentions finding a social network site with a Nobel laureate group at 54,000 members to which to market to. And I think the following video, which captures "A Day in the Life of Social Media" is also trying to highlight the many marketing opportunities based on the large number of participants in social media.
But outside of using social media for marketing, Dr. Howard points out several other uses in his book for social media, from improving creativity and decision-making processes to reducing training and support costs to flattening hierarchies and improving retention and loyalty. An example he uses is the speed at which an incorrect Wikipedia entry is fixed by the community. Social media is clearly a valuable tool for companies, if only companies would realize how to use it.
I thought the above video was interesting in pointing out the power of social media. It's clearly a vast resource, to which Gillin provides numerous ways to search though. But, the problem with this video and Gillin, I think, is that they mostly focus on marketing potential. What I believe Dr. Howard and myself are trying to point out is it can be used for much more than that. It can also be multifaceted support tool.
Very cool video; the amount of social media content produced in the span of a day is staggering. It seems like there is no good way to navigate it EXCEPT, and this is sort of frightening to imagine, for building a data-collection system which, like social networks, is built around individuals. I'm imagining marketers building a database that is organized into profiles, like Facebook or whatever, then aggregates and codes all the content produced through each profile. It could then track that information across other profiles; for example, one person uploads an image featuring a group enjoying some nice big slices of Todaro's pizza. The marketers track who else is tagged, who comments or likes, and what is produced is a sort-of social-marketing-web. And it only becomes more refined over time as users reveal more about themselves-- brand communities will be able to be facilitated simply by identifying a connected group of individuals and targeting them using effective social media strategies.
I think such a meta-social media aggregator could have other applications beyond marketing, but that's the scary stuff imo~
Very cool video; the amount of social media content produced in the span of a day is staggering. It seems like there is no good way to navigate it EXCEPT, and this is sort of frightening to imagine, for building a data-collection system which, like social networks, is built around individuals. I'm imagining marketers building a database that is organized into profiles, like Facebook or whatever, then aggregates and codes all the content produced through each profile. It could then track that information across other profiles; for example, one person uploads an image featuring a group enjoying some nice big slices of Todaro's pizza. The marketers track who else is tagged, who comments or likes, and what is produced is a sort-of social-marketing-web. And it only becomes more refined over time as users reveal more about themselves-- brand communities will be able to be facilitated simply by identifying a connected group of individuals and targeting them using effective social media strategies.
ReplyDeleteI think such a meta-social media aggregator could have other applications beyond marketing, but that's the scary stuff imo~