Social media: Enthusiast, analyst, researchers, political activists and vendors. (And me)
22/10-2010
For me social media is still somewhat strange and a new world for the brave and young. I have approached it by:
Listening to performers/enthusiasts
Listening to analysts, academic researchers
Reports about social media
Marketing Promises
Please notice that an ordinary article about social media is multifold longer. This is just a beginning for me. But I might be back. Just as social media are here to stay. Below I will go through the knowledge chain. What do the enthusiasts tell me, what do the analysts/researchers say. They might have a more neutral view. Reports on how social media can be used – preferably with a hindsight. And what are the implications for me as a market researcher.
The prime input from me came from the Insights days by GfK in Stockholm. The GfK Group is one of the largest market research companies in the world and deliver the knowledge on markets and sectors which our clients need for their decisions. The GfK Group is headquartered in Nuremberg, Germany. The Swedish office is in Lund.
Enthusiast
There are enthusiasts like Dr. Robin Teigland, Associate Professor, Stockholm School of Economics. I tried to learn from her fascinating presentation at GfK:s Insight seminar. This is (below and borrowed from her) what I can do with social media. I have started climbing up the social ladder. I guess that today it is no good to fall down – you end up alone in cyber space where no one can hear you scream.
Analyst
Norbert Wirth – Global Head of Innovation CR at GfK was the second presenter at the Insight day. My thoughts were that he must have the solution to the research problems today. How do you catch the people that just have mobiles and get their information (commercial, commercial in disguise, pure knowledge or colored knowledge) on the net? It turned out that there is no holy grail. It is just hard work and diverse methods depending on the target group. (The tables below come from his presentation)
HOW TO REACH JOHANNA 18 YEARS
Academic researcher
Kristina Widestedt, academic researcher in journalism, media and communication at the University of Stockholm. This was a lecture on the elections in Sweden. What impact did the social media have? Very intriguing considering Obama’s often cited success with social media. It turned out that she did not have much penetration results. Just home pages for the parties with links to the party leader and his/hers social media conversations (and self enhancement). I am still waiting for facts about social media during the election. Listing to the speeches after the election the leaders talked about how many face-to-face contacts were made. No thank you to the bloggers, twitters ….(organizers or partakers)
Social media as a political, activist tool
Searching the web I found an article in The New Yorker (October 18 2010, by Malcolm Gladwell) about social media and political impact. He compared what happened in the deep south Greensboro, North Carolina, when four blacks entered a café with a sign “Whites only” :
“I’d like a cup of coffee, please,” one of the four, Ezell Blair, said to the waitress.
“We don’t serve Negroes here,” she replied.
Some seventy thousand students eventually took part (in sit ins, demonstrations, marches). Thousands were arrested and untold thousands more radicalized. These events in the early sixties became a civil-rights war that engulfed the South for the rest of the decade—and it happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter.
The kind of activism associated with social media isn’t like this at all. The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand “friends” on Facebook, as you never could in real life
Read more here.
Report
Yes we do it! We socialize or entertain ourselves on the net. The following chart is based on Nordicom -The Swedish Internetbarometer 2009.
Marketing Promises
Webtrafic.se has information that promises to find the right target group on the net. Interesting promises that need more looking in to. Who knows more?
Of course this is the important turning point for marketers and researchers. Facts for targeting. And facts on how stories, information spread on the net.
My summary
Of course I will climb higher and higher on the social ladder and with more knowledge I am not afraid of falling down. As a market researcher I must understand and utilize the impacts on marketing, on social affairs that social media will have in the future.
By Bo Bäckman
bo.backman@gmail.com Linkedin
[...] quote Bo Bäckman from in his last Superbrands post ‘we socialize [and] entertain ourselves on the net.’ Through social media the web has now [...]
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