Welcome to the first post! My interest is in studying the impacts, current methods, theories reinforcing social media as a vehicular force in web marketing. Social media as it is empowers consumers to "talk-back" to brand messages, sharing opinions and product feedbacks across a distributed environment with a direct consequence of influencing buy decisions. The irony is corporations fearing negative impacts towards their brand, have resisted embracing social media as an important component of their strategy.
Viral styled marketing has probably never seen a better day than now. Information is spreading fast and furious on a backbone of the best web technology and innovations of our time, and I believe we are merely witnessing the tip of the iceberg. Open industry standards such as OpenID platform has the potential to form bridges linking social networks, possibly other social media applications such as rating sites, video sharing sites.
Today any person can easily put up a blog post, positive or negative, and commands readerships of tens, hundreds, and some even thousands or tens of thousands followers. Import the blog posts into social networking sites like Facebook, and spread the message to all their friends, and their friends' friends ... I bet you can imagine how far this will go.
The following quote is taken from a recent published research paper by Harvard Business School - Digital Interactivity: Unanticipated Consequences for Markets, Marketing, and Consumers.
The digital interactive transformation in marketing is ... unfolding on a model of consumer collaboration, in which consumers use digital media that lie beyond the control of marketers to communicate among one another, responding to marketing's intrusions by disseminating counterargument, information sharing, rebuttal, parody, reproach and, though more rarely, fandom.
The article aptly describes the state of marketing in the world flushed with Web 2.0 sites and enabling technologies. New participants are starting to appear on the digital mobile space - Twitter, Facebook Mobile, further fueling the velocity and spread of conversations.
Further to this, I will be sharing my take on social media tools, usefulness, perspectives and the occasional rants.