It’s The Brand Not The Personality Stupid

I’ve just gotten out of a Ustream.tv chat hosted by Hot Dog Media.

The chat was refreshing and the conversation flowed onto the subject of brands using social media (So.Me), and how and why.

At some point the ugly notion (in my humble opinion) was raised that social media is about personalities, in that if company x employs a community manager they should drive their communication from a personality stance.

WRONG

What brands need in this tribal infested Web 2.0 play-ground are in fact “moderators“, or “facilitators” of dialogue, operating much in the same way a good anchor man/woman on a television news programme would, or a Chair at a convention board.

The fact is that people (social media) will amplify your brand’s negative or positive aspects quicker than you can get your wages paid. Clearly this mean you need two vital things.

  1. a good product

    2. - if you have a crap product people will talk about it being so

  2. conversation moderators - to promote the positive conversation aspects, and to address the negative aspects, with promises of change (disaster management)

To give you a very clear example of why the BRAND should be the talking point and not the personality read this forum thread.

It is a first hand experience, a concrete example, of how I moderated (I am Audiocourses), and facilitated the positive aspects of the BRAND. I wasn’t asking to be loved, the conversation was zero to do with my personality, I was moderating the conversation with objectivity, because I knew full well the BRAND was solid and more importantly that customers thought so too.

What would I have done if the BRAND was not good, or if I didn’t have happy customers? Then I would have facilitated conversation which put forward processes for change.. “yes, we have looked at this, and we are very aware of it, we are organising a steering committee to address this issue” - you get the point.

Think brand, not personalities.

July 30, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 24 Comments 

Twactic

Another day and another definition.

Twactic - the art of tactically using twitter to drive traffic to your posts.

Classic examples include liberal use of WOW, capitalised in conjunction with mentioning a “friend” and pointing to a url.

e.g.

“audio #So.Me Twactic watch: > “WOW - Great Comments @badgergravling” >> http://tinyurl.com/6p8p6k less than 5 seconds ago from web”

If you have some prized Twactics please comment.

In addition, raise your glass to Danie Ware of Forbidden Planet.

“@audio interesting twittertactic (twactic?) there. Worked too :) about 20 hours ago from web in reply to audio”

See how I also gave you another example of tactic, in this case #So.Me Blogactic, to mean using your Blog to praise a fellow disciple, thus fuelling the ideological amplification.

I will now go and use a Twactic in Twitter, to prove my point and bring you here, play fair and let me know if it worked.

July 30, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 2 Comments