user generated content

“Why would customers want to create content for our brand?” is a question we commonly come across at FreshNetworks. The truthful answer is often  “They don’t”. In fact, the question is the wrong one altogether.

Carlos Jordan de Urries (left) and Chrystele Bazin (below), senior consultants at Sofrecom (a France Telecom Company) have updated us on the status of Social Media in emerging markets last Monday in Cairo. In this presentation, we’ll focus less on international Social media platforms and more on what the motivations are for people to follow – or not follow – brands like Coca Cola for instance.

The content creation business is thriving these days, especially now that the Conventional Wisdom has all but freed it from having any direct connection or relevance to actually selling anything. Instead, one of the new deliverables of today's marketing is often a contest of some sort, which I think is even worse than not saying anything meaningful about a brand.

A while ago, I was asked to describe the Social Web in just 5 keywords. Here are the 5 tags which I have chosen to summarise it:

note: this is the unabridged version of a post originally published at http://bnet.co.uk of which I am a regular contributor

continued from part one, this article will be published in 10 instalments

Four: facilitate, facilitate, facilitate

note: this is the unabridged version of a post originally published at http://bnet.co.uk of which I am a regular contributor

2010 will be year 6 of the Social Media era (née Web 2.0). Needless to say that 6 years is a long time in the Internet business world. For those who can remember those days, it more or less fits in with the time at which the Internet started to be really popular (if we assume that we first heard about it in 1994 and that 2000 was the most exciting moment of all).

Social media and social networks allow people to connect either because of a shared experience, a shared interest, concern, question or problem. Social networks, on one hand, are about connections – they allow people to connect and organise themselves and to keep in touch with people. Online communities, on the other hand, help connect people who share a similar experience, problem or situation.

Like many people I will be travelling later today. Taking one of the last trains on Christmas Eve from London to the north of England. And like many people I have spent the last few days checking the weather and the news, hoping that my train will run and I will make it on time.

I’ve spent the last ten days with no Internet and very little access to English-language news sources. On my return I turned to my three favourite sources for getting up to speed quickly on what’s been happening: BBC News, Twitter and Google. The first of these for an overview of what had happened and the last two to really delve into some depth, to find out what people have been saying and to see what’s really been happening.

Amazon has announced a competition for customers to create their own 30-second video commercials for the brand. Two winners will each get $10,000 Amazon.com Gift Cards, and their work will be screened at "a U.S. film festival."