A voice in the wilderness?
I met with the panellists I’m with at Local Social Summit next week, and we were discussing several issues that we want to cover next week.
High on the list was a subject I’ve talked about many times before: how you attribute value to social media marketing. Over the past year, as an industry, we’re getting better and better at figuring out some things to measure in the online world itself. This is good news… but it’s not always the most important thing.
How do we track what happens at the point of sale? How we measure that ‘last mile’ is going to be critical to understand the value of social marketing – where ’social meets local’ is a wonderful place to make that connection count.
Please come along and join us if you’d like to add to the debate – the panel details are below:
Social Media Marketing – The Rules are Changing
With the rise of social media and powerful self-publishing tools (Blogger, WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia etc) the conversation between brands and consumers has changed forever. In this session we will explore the new rules and what this means for advertising, marketing and PR. All of which have been changed in a flash and forever. We will also dig into what engagement, the conversation and the attention economy really means for marketers.
Moderator: Mike Weston
Panel:
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- Sokratis Papafloratos, CEO TrustedPlaces
- Paul McCrudden, of the #6weeks project fame
- Carolyn Watt, Profero
- Nathan McDonald, Managing Partner – wearesocial
This is an event I’d actually be very interested in attending – between my (re-visited) career in email marketing, and my interest in social websites in general, it sounds intriguing.
Social media does mean (as you’ve pointed out on a number of occasions, and via a number of media) that companies no longer are the sole arbiters of what is being said about them, or even on behalf of them. And, often, it’s the negative that gets publicised – the whistle blowing (or merely disgruntled) employee, the customer who got bad service, the punter who has lost money, the member of public who has read something (even unattributed). This can serve to really protect the consumer, but it can also lead to unsubstantiated rumours being re-reported as gospel.
Interesting subject!