It's Open - Social Media Strategy Consultancy

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of social media is the sheer speed at which the conversation changes. In the realtime flow of social media, it is increasingly difficult for companies stay abreast of the conversational context – and in turn, to know when and how to make meaningful contributions.

A new start up, based in New York, takes an innovative approach to the speed/context conundrum. Directed at brand marketers, Social Flow is an automated data mining tool that generates contextually relevant contributions by analysing a company’s Twitter account. For example, the tool follows a company’s Twitter feed, determines which followers are online, what the followers are talking about and what keywords they tend to be using during their conversations.

In the words of Om Malik: “Once the system determines that you (the publisher) has something interesting to offer, it tweets out a link that’s contextual to the conversation. The right link at the right time, theoretically speaking, translates to more effective responses and higher click throughs. Social Flow in many ways is a start up built for the new, data-rich, real-time web with the concept of serendipity as its driving principle”.

The underlying approach taken by Social Flow is similar to contextual search advertising: rather than matching keywords with searches, it matches realtime conversations with brands. However, Social Flow also points to a more powerful approach: by automatically mining the social web, companies have the potential to connect with their followers in a more proactive and relevant fashion.

A word of warning though. An application such as Social Flow ultimately needs to be part of a much wider arsenal of tools and skills. An effective social media strategy ultimately depends on the vision and collective experience of a communications team – regardless of the speed at which any software can analyse conversations.

Quite a few leading communications professionals I meet are nervous about losing control when they engage with social media and what they would do if their responses triggered an avalanche of replies on different topics.

Communications professionals do not need to be technologists. But they cannot be afraid of technology. Every communications professional needs a set of skills as a user of social media. Twitter, blogs, videos, podcasts, etc, are all technology trends that are boosting communications power in the marketplace. Add to that the power of technology on new mobile devices and you have great opportunities to gain competitive advantages in the way you leverage the technology to expand your customer base.

You need to make sure you are prepared when you try out these new methods of communications. But you don’t want to be one of those ‘who doesn’t get it’.

The new world of social media is happening now. Don’t be left behind or be playing catch up. The numbers and uses of social media today are compelling and continue to grow, especially globally. The key challenge is not control but to determine when and how you use these powerful new tools.