My views on social media – its power to connect and bring people closer, to empower participation, to give voice – are well known. Equally well known are my views on using social media as a marketing tool and that I consider many marketing efforts using social media to be shortsighted at best, rarely considering the long view and the value such efforts could bring to brands if only long term strategy rather than short term campaigns were the goal.
I’ve been working with studio Transfer and mediasauce to put together a reel showcasing our views and the views of real people – people who don’t work in or with social media, but simply use it to add something to their lives.
Not especially scientific, we conducted vox pops around Sydney markets over a few weekends (there’s a lot of footage not in the final cut) to see what regular folks thought social media was, how they used it and what credence they gave marketing messages in social media.
What we found out should make the social media marketers give pause.Far from absorbing social media marketing messages, people are connecting with each other, building trust networks, and are quite sophisticated in their use patterns both for business and personal use. As for marketing messages, they care little for deliberate marketing, rather, they turn to those they trust for recommendations.
Take a look.
