Cerebra

When I mention the word ‘research’ you would be forgiven for yawning, as yes, traditional research with qualitative and quantitative methods can be laborious and overly time consuming. While I am not trying to dispute the amazing insight and results that can be yielded through investing resources into research, I do wonder if traditional researches are capatilising on modern online research tools.

These new school techniques and methods that I am taking about refer to that of Online Reputation Management, or ORM as it is commonly known. ORM tools afford the user the ability to track online mentions of just about anything, including their brand, competitors, people and events.

Irrespective of whether the Twitter profile you run is personal, or that of a brand, there are several key elements to an appealing bio that could mean the difference between a new follower or a passer by.

Here are a few suggestions that the Cerebra team has put together:

• Use your real name. This will add credibility to your account.

• Clearly indicate what the community will get in return for following you. Provide some insight into what your interests are and what you do for a living. This will give potential followers an understanding of the various content themes you may be covering.

It’s no surprise that your event attendees are using social media for everything from complaining about the coffee, to sharing sound bites from their favourite speakers and everything in-between. So why aren’t you?

The conversation is happening so why not participate, engage, develop relationships, build communities and not only facilitate, but drive the discussion?

Here’s an idea: “take this product and send this to some online influencers and get them to tweet about it.” Yes, that is a common brief to an agency, and no, you should not simply go ahead and get that done. Unless you’re the Reserve Bank and your product is money, simply sending stuff to an influencer is unlikely to achieve the campaign success you had hoped for.

Media strategists are slowly starting to understand digital as both the client and the agency demand a more holistic approach, but what about social media?

For many, the environment is daunting as it goes against what most media strategists are trained to investigate (such as reach, frequency and Gross Rating Points). Social media means consumers have the voice to talk back, but for many, it doesn’t even feature as a blip on the radar as a channel because it’s foreign to traditional media strategy which is all about broadcast.

To me, social media fits in the media mix just as much as TV, radio or print. However, the current agency briefing model doesn’t lend itself to this type of thinking. A few different approaches I’ve seen are: