Today I attended the Social Media Outlook 2013
symposium at the Gannett headquarters at Tsyons Corner, VA.
I’ll list as dot points the points that were made.
Generally, most attendees were more interested in practical monetization than
policy debates (like “do not track”) or social issues.
The keynote speaker was Rohit Bhargava author of “Likeonomics,” (Wiley) teaches at Georgetown, “7 Social Media Trends
for 2013”, first time announced before publication.
Social trend reports are self-serving and lack
credibility.
Important trends are (1) efficient or optimized
shopping, especially when in the store,, as with (1a) integrate devices with
Dashlane (1b) cross checking
prescriptions(1c) flexible renting instead of buying (Zipcar); (2) Partnership
publishing (or cooperative publishing, as compared to simplified
print-on-demand), also called DIT “Do it together, examples such as (2a)
Netminds (typically needs team members for an author) (2b) Domino Project (2c)
Paper lantern; (3) Humanbanking or community banking, using plain language,
with a new kind of credit card called “Founders Card”, tailored toward
entrepreneurs; (4) Me Funding as a variation of Crowd Funding or Kickstarter; one example is a girl raising money to go
overseas for a charity trip; (4a)
another example is Indiegogo; (5) Very local commerce, such as the idea that
“all news is local” (5a) Goodzer, local shopping (5b) Shopify; (6)
Friend-Sourced travel; (7) Degree-free lending, like creatvieLIve (it’s not
easy to teach music composition this way because “it takes a long term to
become a good composer”).
Someone asked about trends for “public relations
practioners”, and “content as an aspect of marketing”.
The panel comprised Dan Berger (Social Tables) (replaced
by Sashi Bellamkonda), Jodi Gersh (Gannett), Leigh George (R2Integrated).
Facebook and Twitter are losing their “cool” or mojo with
youngest people, gaining with older adults. Sponsored ads as part of a timeline
are seen as intrusive by visitors. Facebook’s tracking algorithm may be overly
tuning a visitor’s newsfeed, excluding some things he or she actually would
want to see. Facebook is an “easy
publishing platform” but it doesn’t reach everyone. The single SignOn of Facebook still drives a
lot of modern Web interaction experience.
Not many people keep track of all of their contact information off of
Facebook (but I do!, in an off-line directory
-- am I still a 90’s person?). Lower income people use mobile apps
related to Facebook because they don’t have desktops and laptops! The mobile smartphone has become much more
essential that even a traditional home “family” computer.
Twitter is locking down the ability of other sites
to use their feeds (not sure on Facebook). Myspace may be coming back (to the
horror of Dr.Phil) because it was highly visual(and had a robust blogging
platform which I recall Ashton Kutcher using heavily). Amazon will dominate retail because of
convenience. Google+ has mixed outlook
(“ghost town”??) , but it enriches the notion of SEO (search engine
optimization). Local retail outlets need
a Google+ page to get higher ranking for searches. There is also “Google Now”.
There was an Atlantic article on “dark social” that
said that about half of the links we go to don’t come from original content
(but goes to emails and reworked lists). I was “drafted” in 1968 bit escaped
deployment because of “too much education”.
Social media sharing of links, as well as the
substance of original content, does help advertisers even without using
tracking. With the tracking that users
will accept, tracking codes are important.
Online social media and e-commerce should reduce
shopping rushes like “Black Friday”.
After break, the second panel was “Social Media
Intelligence” by Wendy Moe (a statistician) at the University of Maryland,
link. Companies have moved from typical broadcast media and public relations firms
to social media (example, Cincinnati’s Procter and Gamble). Can social media data replicate traditional
market research? We need to measure what matters. She talked about the Twitter
mentions of the GOP candidates, and the leader was Rick Santorum because of his
controversial stands on social issues. Blogcasted opinions tend to be more
positive than forum opinions.
Mark Amtower
spoke about “LinkedIn for GovCon: The Time Is Now!” The government market is on LinkedIn but not
Facebook, Twitter, etc. Myths:
government doesn’t use social media, LinkedIn is just for job hunters. LI is for “business” (Trump), all the time.
Post your skills, not your resume. Use targeted groups. Add value where you
participate.
Another tip: carry business cards. I have to start doing that.
Shashi Bellamkonda talked about SCNR (Society of New
Media Communications and Research). He said that social media provides a better
way to learn about a company than a company website (no matter how well it
programs with XSL!) Still, many CEO’s
don’t consider social media much in making decisions. Companies have also been
remiss in following their Wikipedia pages.
I asked the panel from the audience about the
photography issue(yesterday’s post).
They felt that laws would change only very slowly, but that media
photographers should start behaving with more care, courtesy(“ask”) and
sensitivity than they have in the past, because the online reputation concerns
of individuals are real.
During the breakfast networking, I asked about “do
not track”. The general feeling was that
companies would program or find other clever strategies to work around it. It really didn’t seem to have been thought
through as a policy problem.
I have to say it was amusing to see a woman
programming (in the stadium row below)
in Microsoft .NET (in Visual Basic or C#) on a laptop, as if pressured by a
work deadline later that day!
(Note the spelling of the book title above: "o", not "a"; I picked up a copy and will review later).
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