Mark Ragan, CEO of Ragan Communications, asks Tom Fishman, MTV's manager of social media & community, and Jon Bellinger, VP of social media strategy at Ketchum Inc., what important skills young PR professionals need when using social media.
http://www.ragan.com/Main/Video/1504.aspx
The biggest take away from this video for me is the importance of integrating yourself into a community. Knowing how members act and prefer to interact with companies is vital. Using those communities as only a convenient tool isn’t a good way to share a message, we can all see through those lazy tactics. But creating a real dialog and collaboration with those community members can lead to great results.
The best way to integrate a message into these communities is to know how they work and what actions are seen as acceptable and which ones step over the line. Once this is made clear it’s easier to work with people from those communities and know how a brand can fit in with them.
Another upside of this is that now I have a good excuse for all the time that will be wasted on various sites instead of doing work. I’m not procrastinating; I’m studying online communities.
Fishman has some interesting insight; separating the brand's content into multiple Facebook pages seems like a great strategy, and yet it is not something I may have thought up of my own. Especially something for MTV, which deals with so many platforms. I wonder why that philosophy does has not crossed over into forms, like department stores and what not.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your point about working with the community...sometimes it is not enough to just post on Twitter or Facebook for others to read; it must instigate reactions and opinions...that feedback is critical to a social media campaign.
"Another upside of this is that now I have a good excuse for all the time that will be wasted on various sites instead of doing work. I’m not procrastinating; I’m studying online communities."
That is the story of my life.
Nice post Paul!
I completely agree with everything you posted. I'm interning at a not-for-profit organization right now and believe me figuring out what to post on Twitter or even Facebook sometimes gets frustrating because you have to try not to repeat everything you say, but also what is going to get the people on your page excited to either join, volunteer or even donate. Knowing what your viewers or outreach want and trying to get the point across through tweets and Facebook groups or posts is difficult. And don't worry, I too am not procrastinating, I'm just learning how to use social media effectively =) !
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