Social networks: far more good than damage

This is probably what has been most repeated during the Blogging for Business event yesterday in London, or at least the one I heard the most and it can answer the opening question of the conference 'how social media is changing your business?'.

Probably because attendees seemed to be more agencies and brands than experienced bloggers or social networkers- if we except the speakers themselves- and that they came to be informed and reassured about the social tools they should be using already or asap.

This is one of the reasons why this event was completely different from my experience at Le Web 3 in Paris last December. The fact that women were almost 50% of the audience (pity they use toilets only to make up though :-), that they were almost zero PC on tables and thus zero complaints about slow connection but some about too few desserts still :-), no presence of any politics except for the virtual presence of Hillary Clinton whose blog was mentionned, real interesting panels with mostly passionate speakers, all these and more made it a far more valuable experience to me too:

The first presentation of the day reminded me of my last reco in which i talked about enabling community members to contribute to knowledge creation - btw, Antidot eventually lost the competition for the Belgium IAB new website against the last Goliath, Luon, but this is an other story ...
The Yahoo answers service was completely new for me - i learned later that all big players are developing the same kind of applications. The aim? Creating a better user experience by letting people contribute to search answers. This looks like a mix of forum, wiki, de.li.ci.ous, squidoo,you name it where all the community members can participate, vote, present them as experts, etc. Brands can also use it completely customed for their websites&blogs. I suggest to have a look at their website for a tour.   

Question is 'is this content really valuable?' About the quality offered by UGC, Bradley Horowitz, VP of Product  Strategy at Yahoo was the first but not the last to claim than in social networks quality feedback is much more important than crap feedback.
At once the first questions in the public were about 'how much feedback do brands want to receive from the users' - read 'allow' - and which monitoring tools can be recommanded.

Different country, same questions, similar answers.
Regarding the feedback generated by the users, brands still play it safe engaging preferably rather about what people can do with their products than asking if they like it or how they would like it better. Regarding the bad feedback one can post on blogs, one of the participants explained that your blog should be treated as your house: everybody is welcomed to visit you and come to your place, but if someone is being rude with you or don't follow your house's rules, you make him quit your place. And that's exactly what it is about.

Monitoring was a BIG topic with several actors offering paid services like eModeration, Attentio, Hitwise. They all remind that the first monitoring step is to listen to the blogosphere whatever the tools you're choosing to do so (no representatives from free services like Technorati or Blogpulse to name but just 2 of the biggest ones were present at the conference).

Attentio's presentation gave insight in the company monitoring methodology. Their analysis answers these 3 following questions to : 
- 1st: are we - the brand- discussed?
- 2nd: what issues are being raised?
- 3rd: how we - the brand- interact with this social media?
Attentio's solution is 1st to monitor with home made products, 2nd to understand and 3rd to communicate with the key influentials.
The international dimension was raised stressing the fact that online monitoring of different national social networks enable to see how those different markets are reacting to say a new product launch.
I'm wondering if monitoring can yet be done on videos and podcasting?

One of the greatest presentations of the day was done by Mickael Steckler from Microsoft. He talked- a bit too quickly indeed to type it all but more on his presentation can be found here - about the motivations and the behaviour of the social networks and their opportunities. Like other speakers before, he also insisted than social networks are coming on top of the existing today tools and not in place of. What i'll keep about the main motivation of the social networker is what has been defined as 'increasing reserves': in social capital (the more people you know and who they are), in intellectual capital (that is what you know and what you keep learning) and cultural capital (who you are through your holidays pictures, the clothes that you are wearing etc.). A few more interesting data on behaviour like the fact that pic hours for social activity comes at 70% after the working hours (from 5pm till 11pm) and more advices to be followed by any player in social network:

1- Understand your consumers' motivations
2- Express yourself as a brand
3- Create & maintain good conversations
4- Empower praticipants
5- Identify brand advocates
6- Behave like a social networker
7- Be transparent
8- Expect criticism

I'll finish with the most poetic quotation of the day, coming from an other Microsoft ex- devils :-) Darren Strange who said it all: "Blogging - and i add social media in general- is not about being right or wrong, it's a journey to the Truth'. I've started mine. And I know both from my buddhism readings and my trekking trips that the journey is more important than the setted goal :-) Might yours be as passionate as you are.

Comments

[Caroline]

Just read an almost 'live' coverage of the conference on the Climb to the Stars' blog (http://climbtothestars.org/). Seems like a really cool girl - maybe the fact that we had a trampoline week-end biases me :-) i'll keep reading

[Caroline]

Hello Tijs! I'm doing some research on monitoring for an article. Are you interested to meet to talk bout it?
Let me know! ;-)

[tijs]

Perhaps even more important than knowing what has been said about your brand, is actually to know who's likely to talk about your brand, your products or services. In that way you'll actually be able to influence whatever is going to be said. Check MetaTale.eu shortly ;-)