by Jonathan Mathias
This week, Johnson King will - for the second year in a row - be attending the annual Social Media Week London event. Last year we brought you a series of blog entries, authored by both Johnson King and our partner agency, Affect Strategies, who attended Social Media Week New York. This year is no different, as we again share our thoughts on all things social media from both sides of the Atlantic on the blog, twitter feed and LinkedIn discussion group.
A lot has happened in a year. Mark Zuckerberg was named Time Person of the Year 2010, a film about his website is up for eight Oscars, Old Spice got social media right, while others struggled, and we’ve recently seen more demonstrations of the power and influence of social media in a political context. ‘Social Media’ is as hot a topic as it’s ever been, but is it any nearer to being successfully channelled and reliably exploited by businesses? Well, campaigns such as the Old Spice one already mentioned certainly raked in the hits, as did the Tippex campaign - both showing how popular, and widely received, viral videos can be. We also found out that social media is no panacea, with brands such as BP and Nestlé unable (or perhaps just unprepared?) to use social media to their advantage in times of crisis.
Towards the end of 2010, I wrote about how all the travel disruption at the time demonstrated just how badly some businesses and organisations were neglecting to use social media to inform and engage their target audiences. However, since then, I’ve also written about some encouraging experiences with businesses starting to use social media tools including Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare and, most recently, Facebook has announced Facebook Deals, which augments the social network’s Foursquare killer, Facebook Places.
I genuinely feel that, whereas 2010 was more of a social media training ground - where businesses got more to grips with the potential opportunities and real possibilities - we’re really going to see social media come of age with businesses either making or breaking it by how they exploit the tools on offer.
It will certainly be interesting to see how the sessions at Social Media Week 2011 address the hottest questions a la mode; how can you protect your reputation with social media? Exactly how should you use Facebook & Twitter for business, and, the question everyone seems to be asking, is Quora the new Twitter?!
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