Meg Kerr is a Social Media Integration Manager at Mosaic Experiential Marketing. Before coming to Mosaic, Meg Kerr studied Media, Information & Technoculture and Broadcast Journalism. You can contact her through LinkedIn, or you can follow her on Twitter: @meg_kerr.
It was great to have Meg in, to address the growing role social networks now play in our field.
What is Social Media?
"Social media is like teen sex: everyone wants to do it, no one knows how, and when they finally do it, they're surprised it's not better"
Meg Kerr gets a lot of requests from big brands who want to "to do social media". They are trying to jump in head first without deciding what their objective is. First a brand needs to decide what they need, and then discover how to get there, and it is not always through social media.
Social media = networks that make and share content really easily online.
Social media is here to stay, and it's fundamentally shifted the way people talk to each other, and that's why marketers are so interested in accessing that space.
Trends
1) Realtime + mobile devices
Technology that allows people to share information in realtime from anywhere is very powerful. This refers to smart phones and computers, etc. The velocity and volume at which information is shared will continue to accelerate.
Nearly 1/3 of Canadians own a Smart Phone. More people will soon be accessing the internet on their phones than on their laptops, which will have a huge effect on advertising.
Twitter is such a game changer because now news organization can never truly be the first to break a story. When news happens, people can turn to twitter first for first-hand accounts, photographs and videos. These sources are becoming much faster than traditional sources of media.
Example: When Tiger Woods crashed his car, within 15 minutes on twitter we knew details about the crash, 45 minutes before the news broke the story.
2) Location-based services and Geo-tagging.
Instead of telling your friends where you are, location-based services like four-square and yelp update your location for you. Some of these networks are easily integrated with your other social media sites.
Four-square: works by checking in locations via your phone. There is also a function on four-square where you can offer reviews on businesses for your friends. Four-Square has now layered on the ability for venues to offer deals via their site. There are now 15 million users on four-square.
3) Privacy
The industry perspective: If a site allows members to keep too much of their info private, that will effect what kind of information the site can sell, and therefore revenue.
There is risk involved in your information not being private enough. It was a great reminder for Meg to show us the news report about a family's tweet that led to their house being burglarized while they were away.
There is also risk that your information posted on social networks is searchable by anyone, and as we are all by now aware, could lead to repercussions.
Please Rob Me: A site that tells the world when you're not home by scanning twitter and facebook for posts about when you aren't home.
Privacy issues have always been a concern, but now that location is involved it is even more of an issue.
4) Social Media becoming less social
Mass networks fill up with "noise" and become cluttered, and now youths are seeking out more exclusive niche markets. Twitter and Facebook contain a mass amount of information, and it is difficult to cut through all of the clutter. Now social networks are moving away from inclusiveness. Example: you can create lists of what people you want to see what information online.
Now there are invitation-only social networks specific to interests. There are even sites where you are required to submit a resume to join. Online users are becoming overwhelmed, and wanting to segment their lives, and only see information that they are really interested in. Meg thinks we'll be seeing more and more of this.
A tongue-in-cheek social commentary about the amount of time we invest in social networking sites. This website will permanently erase your social networking sites upon request. This is a service that deletes your digital life.
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