#IPASocial

Last Tuesday I nabbed a seat at the #IPASocial talk with some of the guys from Collective, it was a great evening and look forward to attending the one :) There are several other excellent posts that (amongst other things) describe the events of the evening, so here I'll just discuss the thoughts I came away with directly afterwards.

The most interesting aspect of this talk compared to the other talks I've attended was the implicit recognition by all the speakers that there's the lack of an authoritative voice in social media. This translated into our later group discussion, where people were keen to debunk the idea of anyone having all the answers on how to 'do social'. There's no all-encompassing answer; it's about using the right social platforms in the right way in the right context. It also takes a keen understanding of the brand in question and of all the platforms to suggest the appropriate methods of social communication.

That being said, I'd suggest you can split social brand activity into two streams: 'campaign activity' and an 'ongoing rumble of conversation'. With an example of campaign activity being the Compare the Meerkat campaign for Compare the Market, and an example of an ongoing rumble of conversation being Scott Monty's omnipresence at Ford. User engagement will spike for campaign activity and if appropriate for the brand in question, there should be an ongoing rumble of conversation ("not everyone wants to chat about crisps all the time" I think is how Nicola put it).

In the future, I'd predict only seeing agencies getting involved in campaign activity, with the ongoing rumble of conversation being handled purely client-side. All it requires is an understanding of how to use the various platforms appropriately; no specialist skills are required to participate to the full. In the beginning, agencies will be needed to help out educating their clients on how to use the platforms with case studies and such, but that should be the extent of it. For a lot of brands I would imagine this would require a specific resource, a la Scott Monty.

It's worth adding that an 'ongoing rumble of conversation' may apply to campaigns that attain the level of ubiquity that Compare the Meerkat does, and therefore requiring the constant involvement of an agency.

Big thanks to @cherkoff, @herdmeister, @neilperkins, @Amelia_Torode and whoever else was involved in making the evening happen.

Comments

[Nicola]

Ha ha yeah that's exactly how I put it!

I totally agree with your prediction. As clients begin to grasp social media, they'll actually want to be the ones to engage in real conversation with their consumers. This is rewarding for both consumer (speaking to the right person) and client (hearing feedback from consumers in real-time). And then leave the fancy stuff to us :)

Nic