By Iain MacMillan on January 6, 2010
I’ve been thinking about the type of stimulus or fuel we use to develop ideas for social activities. I think there are two places to look:
1. Resources created within an organisation as a result of product development and business management.
These resources can be reused, re-purposed or re-assembled – and then shared with media, customers or prospects. They could include, for example, product specification data, sales trend data, product development plans, annual report research and employee expertise. In essence, this is the ‘coal’ Leo described in a previous blog post – resources that have additional uses over-and-above the ones for which they were originally created.
We need to become better at digging into the numerous departments and silos within our client’s organisations, unearthing these resources, conjuring up new ways to use them – and maximising their value.
2. Resources and collateral created with the sole aim of generating awareness and interest in the products and business.
Social media activity still involves re-purposing a lot of video, audio, print and event content that has been created for other marketing uses. However, as the KUDOS framework suggests, we must get better at understanding people’s behaviour and needs within social spaces, and delivering content, tools, ideas and support that meet these needs.
Monitoring their online conversations, responding to them and engaging with them is helping us do this.
Image courtesy of joyosity / Joy.
Posted in FAQs, Marketing, Social Networks, Stories |
Iain founded RMM in 2006, with the objective of providing good, strategic advice across all areas of digital and social media. Nowadays, the focus is entirely social and involves the provision of more than just advice – insight, inspiration and expertise in social media. Iain leads the strategy development and training teams on most client projects.
He specialises in leading client strategy projects in a number of sectors, including finance and gambling, where RMM has conducted studies into social behaviour in highly regulated environments. He also leads projects for travel sector clients, a sector in which RMM works in partnership with eCRM sector specialist, Spike Marketing. They work together across a number of clients, most recently including Neilson Holidays, Thomas Cook’s ski and active holidays division.
Prior to RMM, Iain spent five years helping to run the web design business, Tonic, winning and managing accounts such as Vodafone, GE, GAP, MTV and Barclaycard. Before that he worked at Tribal DDB London, working on Volkswagen before heading up the Victor Chandler, Sony Europe and Guardian accounts. And before that he had a colourful career in music promotions, running the annual Soho Jazz Festival in 1997.
Iain spends quite a large amount of time trying and failing to explain to his long-suffering wife why he really loves golf, seventies hard rock and eighties pop. She remains none the wiser.
I’ve been thinking about the type of stimulus or fuel we use to develop ideas for social activities. I think there are two places to look:
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