Who The Heck Are These “Media Mavens”?
I came across this MediaPost article today on what to do when social media “attacks.”
Apparently the “media mavens” surveyed in the report mentioned came up with the following as “counter-strategies” when advertisers come across negative comments in social media:
As one might expect, there is no magic bullet for countering negative comments: the two most popular responses were directly engaging the commenter, a tactic used by 47% of social media advertisers surveyed, and improving the quality of products or services being advertised, according to 33% of respondents.
Aside from these commonsensical but labor-intensive propositions, what other short-term fixes can online advertisers employ in dealing with negative comments? One strategy is neutralizing the negative comment, either by encouraging other consumers to leave positive comments (24%) or attempting to get the content removed by the publisher or blogger (14%).
You know what? Social media might still be shiny and new to some (ok, a lot of) folk, but there’s nothing new about being smart about your communication. And if advertisers are serious about growing their customer bases, they shouldn’t be looking for “short-term fixes” any way.
Why not just do it the old-fashioned way – by putting out a good service or product to begin with? Want to 21st century it up? Use the new SM channels to listen, engage and respond.I mean, seriously. You can’t stumble upon anything referencing social media and not stumble upon those words.
Filed under Communication, Shonali Burke, Social Media | Tags: charlie brown, crisis communications, damage control, Media, mediapost, peanuts, Social Media | Comment (1)Digital Divide Continues – eMarketer
This is pretty interesting – according to a study by the Internet Innovation Alliance, only 42% of African-American and Hispanic consumers use the Internet regularly.
What might change that? The article reads:
“It is very telling that of those respondents who do not have Internet access, 43 percent cited either not knowing how to use the Internet or not seeing the need for the Internet as the reason why they are not online,” said Internet Innovation Alliance co-chairman David Sutphen, in a statement.
“But interestingly, 44 percent of these same respondents said they would be more likely to subscribe to Internet services if they were provided free lessons on how to use the technology and 30 percent would be more likely to adopt if they had more information about how they could benefit from going online. It’s clear that digital literacy programs indeed are a crucial part of the formula for closing the digital divide.”
Media By, For, And Of the Masses
I read about this First Amendment Center report on traditional media still being the first news source for a majority of Americans in PRWeek today (I’m sending you directly to FAC’s site since you might not be able to access the PRW article).
That’s really not a “a-ha” moment for me, despite all the ballyhoo the ongoing debate about traditional media being dead. But it’s an interesting read, and I was fascinated by the way they tried in some cases to break down the finding by demographics (African-Americans and Hispanics are more likely than whites to trust Twitter as a news source… who knew?!).
Reading the survey findings reminded me of an excellent case study by Sean Williams that the Institute for Public Relations published a few months ago, on “how a financial services company used media measurement and content analysis to gauge the impact of financial turmoil on its brand and reputation.”
Because the fact is that regardless of whether you think traditional media is dead, dying or merely comatose while social media beams down indulgently, if your work has anything at all to do with media, you need to be measuring it… and measuring it right.
Filed under Measurement, Media, Public Relations, Shonali Burke | Tags: first amendment center, IPR, Measurement, Media, prweek, sean williams | Comment (0)
