Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Blogging WOMMA: Ten Takeaways from the WOMMA Research Symposium

1. Nobody said tracking social media was going to be easy.

2. There are lots of different kinds of social media--from User Generated Content (UGC) to blogs to social networking communities to influencer-targeted parties--and a company might choose to use one, two or all different forms of social media to generate WOM.

3. Develop a social media strategy before jumping in. But don't base that strategy on a metric--base it on how much time your company can put in to human filtering.

4. Algorithms aren't the be-all-and-end-all for helping a company understand the landscape of social media.

5. Human filtrering is far more important than the right algorithim for locating and targeting the right influencers.

6. Whether it's face-to-face or online, humans are the key to generating WOM.

7. Online WOM works best for companies that know their customer's media habits. The more engaged a customer is with all kinds of electronic media, the more likely they will be to engage online social media endeavors.

8. Media-savvy customers will know when a company's behaving in a "too slick" manner and will have an unfavorable response to that particularly "slick" social media endeavor.

9. Even if you engage in all sorts of social media, it's not going to help if you refuse to respond to criticism or have a bad product.

10. Social media won't make a bad product better (but it just might get it off the market.)

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