Pick up the Wall Street Journal on any given day and you're likely to see a story or two about a new social media technology that's raising millions of VC dollars. And then there's number of unsolicited inquiries I receive weekly wanting to know if any new loyalty/engagement/media entity is in need of capital or looking to be bought out.
Sure, these new technologies that can create, engender, and enhance loyalty marketing are very interesting --- such as Social CRM and its ability to follow numerous web/mobile-based conversations and give meaning to them for their "additive attributes".
But, what is going to make social media different?
It should be more strategic and data centric, right? Yes. But, according to the 2010 COLLOQUY/DMA survey, two-thirds of respondents were unable to express what the most important measure of social media success would be. Shouldn't this be defined, or is it too much change too fast? All new media seems "promising," but consumers and brands have a hard time defining what the promise is and what it should be. To quote a CMO at a large Fortune 500 brand recently, "We realize there is potential in all of these new technologies and media and there IS a need for us, but how do we define it? It seems to be a moving goalpost."
I'm wondering: With this rapid proliferation of technologies, how can marketers better understand this? How can they tell if the product (new media or packaged good) is going to be the next New Coke or Red Bull, the next My Space or Facebook?
I think these questions become harder to answer when you throw the issue of "bandwidth" into the fray. In today's fast-paced, constantly-connected world, most of my friends and colleagues say they are lacking one key thing: TIME. How does the average individual have time to engage all of these new technologies given their lack of time?
According to the 2010 Cone Consumer New Media Study, more than 80% of consumers say they follow only five or fewer brands online, whether through Facebook, Twitter or an RSS feed. Marketers now have to question not only what the next new, break-through technology is going to be, but "how do you get to be one of those five brands?"
Conventional wisdom might content that with increased choice comes happiness (more to choose from, happier you are). But, the neuroscience of behavior tells us that this is just not true. People want to be engaged, involved in a more socially conscious and targeted approach. Less, it turns out, is more.
So how do you get to be considered? "They (consumers) really only have room in their minds for less than five brands," says Mike Hollywood, Cone's Director of New Media. "It's a pretty exclusive club-if you think about the number of marketing messages a consumer receives daily-to be welcomed into that inner circle of brands."
Companies, in my view, will be challenged to (1) determine where to next look for actionable data and (2) how to quickly identify the sites where dialogues are forming and where these conversations can be measured and monetized in this quickly evolving social landscape. It will be difficult to not only keep up with Twitter, Foursquare, Flickr, Living Social, Gowalla, Facebook, the company blog, communities, etc ..... but also to stay on top of the quickly evolving social media (not to mention mobile) landscape. The opportunity lies in the ability to get a comprehensive and consolidated perspective of the conversations happening across this landscape and to give it insight. Yet, every day this becomes more complex.