Not the way I would have put it, and not much to show for a 30 minute phone interview that dug quite deep, but The Australian’s Lara Sinclair has done a decent look at brand monitoring being done by Australian companies online.
I get a couple of nice quotes:
The burgeoning ranks of social media specialists in Australia are individual consultants, often bloggers, such as Stephen Collins (@Trib) or Laurel Papworth (@silkcharm), most of whom have built up an understanding of the social web from years of being on it.
Collins says organisations need to appoint a senior person with the authority to “act on their own” to head their social media presence.
He says community managers are becoming more common among Australian firms, but social media chiefs are few and far between. Most often, monitoring and responding on the social web becomes a part of an existing employee’s job description.
“People informally helping other people happens all the time,” Collins says.
Understanding this important activity is an increasingly frequent facet of the conversation I have with my clients. If you are a brand in any sector of business, you already monitor brand sentiment. Trouble for you is, there’s an online conversation going on and it’s very immediate, very powerful and you should be a participant in it.
And, that participation shouldn’t be spin-doctoring and hosing down PR disasters, it should be ongoing, respectful and as an equal with the community.
Things have changed.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I think that your comments also highlight some of the issues the corporates will face:-the conversations and responses are often relationship based. How do you capture that ‘personal’ or ‘individual’ element and present it as a service? It’s a very fine line between big brother and support.
Nice new layout Trib…and as usual some interesting insight.