OMMA Social Panel: Seen But Not Heard; When Is It Appropriate for Brands to Simply Listen?

Cover of Listen
Seen But Not Heard; When Is It Appropriate for Brands to Simply Listen?

Moderator:
Cory Treffiletti, President/ Managing Director, Catalyst:SF

Shane Ginsberg, Executive Director, Global Business Development, Organic

Gary Goldhammer, Senior Vice President & Director, Client Services West, Edelman Digital

Martin Green, COO, meebo

Matt Sanchez, CEO, VideoEgg

Rich Ullman, SVP of Marketing, Ripple6

I missed the first bit of this as I got back into blogging mode following some post-panel chatter.

A panelists asked if listening is a must, and everyone generally agreed.

Martin: Brands want to know what specific demos are doing, not just generic.

Matt: There are a lot of ways to listen. With video, I'm looking at the consumption curve of what video looks like. [My take: YouTube Insights has the best platform out there for this that&39;s free for content producers.]

Cory

Cory Treffiletti / Catalyst:SF

via CrunchBase: What do you do with info once you hear people talking about you.

Martin: If I&39;m on Meebo and IMing my friend I don&39;t want to find out a brand&39;s hovering over my shoulder. But I don&39;t mind if it&39;s aggregated and not an invasion of privacy. In an intimate, semi-open blog, I don&39;t want a brand there. It&39;s contextual.

Rich: If a brand wants to have a conversation with me, it goes from the realm of eavesdropping to people inviting the brand in.

Shane: P&G has a place for people connected with feminine hygeine products to talk. When is it appropriate? [My take: P&G did a good job expanding this to make it more about female-specific issues and concerns rather than the products. But it&39;s still a valid question.]

Martin: One thing we&39;ve found is that our users love to answer polls. Brands can take part in these, and then share the answers back with the group while learning the answers.

Gary: With P&G, I hope if I&39;m a young woman it&39;s someone like me and not some marketing person I&39;m engaging with.

Cory: It sounds like it&39;s good for brands to participate in social media. What harm can come to brands?

Shane: Dell got in trouble for not listening.

Matt: Brands can create a community and set the wrong expectations for it.

Martin: It&39;s inappropriate if there are privacy issues. There also has to be a distinction between marketing and advertising. 

Rich: The worst thing? You say you&39;re going to participate in the conversation and then all of a sudden you stop. That can be a bad thing because people will say you&39;re not listening anymore. Also… For a community of 13 year old girls, you put in someone who understands 13 year old girls

Gary: For something for an auto show, we had a real auto enthusiast run it. For the next week then, the guy didn&39;t do anything. The comments in the days after – people got pissed off. The reaction was that he was just there to sell cars. Really, he just went on vacation for a week. We didn&39;t set expectations first.

Shane: That&39;s a structural problem with with social media. I call it the social media magpie effect, running from one platform to another.

Cory: A lot of people seem to look at social media as reactive. You&39;re talking about it as being there for the long haul.

Shane: You have to be careful with expectations going into it.

Q from Perry Hewitt @perryhewitt: When should brands listen in certain white-label communities vs. the whole web?

Rich: White-label communities are affinity based created around brands or ideas. The stuff I care about on the internet is a small bit but it&39;s huge to me. The more you narrow it down, the more manageable it&39;s going to be.

Matt: With the white label network, you also factor in the effort to narrow it down and manage that.

Selected tweets from during the session: