Social is as social does

Repost from Run on Toast

The IPA Social discussion last night was a massive improvement on January's report launch, in which I seem to remember resorting to drawing funny faces in Jamie's Moleskine. Well done to the lovely Jamie, Katy, Mark, Neil and all the rest of the gang for starting the right kind of discussion about social media. If I came away with one thing yesterday it is that it is still uncharted territories and everyone is finding their feet, working out what works and learning from each other. Just as importantly, I have lots of ideas, questions and *cards* from interesting people.

What follows is a collection of thoughts, in no particular order, in the spirit of being part of the conversation:

Measurement
There was a lot of talk about justifying the value of social media, defining its ROI in order to keep clients happy and prove effectiveness. Amelia Torode spoke about work they are doing with the IAB to assess the importance of social activity on the Meerkat work, and I'm sure everyone is looking forward to seeing it if Amelia makes it public. On the subject of the Meerkat, Debbie and I were talking this morning about whether there is a way of measuring the impact of social media on the longevity of the campaign. You can't discount the role of TV in driving the massive numbers that VCCP have delivered for Compare The Market, but if it had been TV-only would it have had the same mileage?

Sitting it out
I rather foolishly nominated myself to host a conversation rather late in the day despite wanting to get involved in the conversation that Amelia was hosting. Bless Katy for joining me and a girl from the IPA (sorry, forgotten your name) in a discussion about whether there were brands that shouldn't get involved in social media. A couple of points:

• Some brands, e.g. Apple, don't use social media to no detriment (I know they are a very peculiar case study, but I'm just saying...)
• A lot of brands want to use social media for the sake of it, jumping on the bandwagon, what Katy called the 'e.g. Facebook' brief
• If there isn't a role for social media, there's no point doing it
• Are you a brand I actually want to speak to socially?
• You might be better off spending that money on improving customer service (lots of successful case studies of brands using social in this space)

Responsibility
We then swiftly went and joined Nick's conversation - I think the title was about which discipline was best placed to manage social. An interesting point was raised about whether responsibility for social should sit with the client or the agency. And actually, is the marketing department (a dept concerned with selling) the best placed to manage that relationship. Maybe customer service is a better bet?

Dirty words
Someone asked a question towards the end about whether 'campaign was such a bad thing?' (UPDATE: It was Nicola Davies - thanks Amelia!). She made the point that they are involving, participatory and rewarding, and actually sometimes you don't want an ongoing conversation with a brand, which I thought it was a good reality check.

Anyway, lots to think about. Disappointed that there wasn't more participation in the mexican wave, but looking forward to the forthcoming conversation and the next meeting.

P.S. Best quote: 'Fabergé eggs? I eat them for breakfast' - Aleksandr Orlov.

Comments

[Amelia T]

Thank you for hosting a conversation - thought you did a great job!
BTW, the girl who talked about Campaigns and Conversations is the very smart Nicola Davies from Amv, you should have a read of her blog

[Nicola]

Hey good round up!

Amelia is right. I am the dirty word girl (wait, that doesn't sound right...).

When it comes to responsibility, I'm also of the belief that social media (when it comes to continual conversations) should be managed by clients. While leaving the idea and content creation to agencies. This is how we work on Doritos, and people in my group were genuinely shocked about how hands-on my client is at tweeting etc!

Nic