In a post last year, Social Media Isn't a Channel Dammit, I implored you not think of social (or whatever you call it) as a new channel. After a few months, I believe that more than ever. This is why I was pleased to see John Bell's post on Digital Influence Mapping (he heads the global 360° Digital Influence team @ Ogilvy PR).
John's post, entitled Non-invasive Social Media Strategies, talks about different ways organizations experiment with social media. He also suggests that treating WOM as a channel breeds "interesting pressure," which I take to mean that it forces us to be more - not less - focused on the dynamics of the channel. So back to my "social media isn't a channel" premise. I still don't think it is, but I do agree that thinking about it as such does force us to approach it more with discipline.
In his post, John goes on to ask the question "Can we inject enough best practices into these less intrusive experiments [in social media/WOM] to make more CMO's and more brand managers believers in the bigger potential of WOM to transform their business?" This is the discipline that I believe John is also talking about. And, once again, as long as the outcome is stronger conversations, I guess the "interesting pressure" John mentions is worth it.
Finally, I agree with John's call for some structure. Not because I like structure, mind you (because I really think it holds back a lot of what we COULD do), but because we need it now more than ever with a looming recession. We can talk all we want about doing cool things in viral, WOM and, generally, social media, but there will be fewer takers in the coming months for our "experimentation" if we can't deliver a best practices framework to assure clients that we have sufficient science behind our art.
Thanks for the post John. Hope I didn't butcher your ideas.
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