In an article featured in figaro, Marc Campman, Marketing Director at Webjam examines how businesses are using online conversations and connections to bring a new dimension to 'word of mouth'. Enabling them to influence the way companies build their brand and develop their reputation which Marc calls this "Brand Inversion". You can view the print article in the attached PDF.

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With most of the specialized press heralding the need to “do social media”, I can see through various discussions, most lately when presenting last week at the Media Tech 100 Invest, that marketers are still torn between two ways of managing a brand: broadcasting a message about product features and brand values in an environment they control or struggling to influence erratic conversations one cannot really control on social networks or forums.

Marketers should move to the next stage and actually purposely blend their official message with the informal conversations of their end-users or clients in what I would call Social Media Hubs. The reason is very simple: people now trust first “a person like me” above experts as highlighted in the Edelman Trust barometer. And with recommendations from these “people like me” (even though you may not know them) influencing more and more purchase decisions, getting your reputation right is paramount ... And reputation is not what you say about yourself on your site but what people say about you in their online conversations... And you are likely to be rewarded if you take this into account rather than hide it.

Too many companies are still creating facebook pages and twitter accounts to tick the “social media box” but they are missing the point if they don’t  see these tools as a live giant feedback loop, which is what the internet has actually become from a marketing prospective. It is interesting that while twitter still presents its philosophy as answering the question “what are you doing ?”, their new homepage now says “See what people are saying about ...”. The real opportunity now is to indeed listen to what people are saying about you there, import it on your “official site” which needs to become an anchor for your community, run there a poll about some of the issues raised and then export the results back in a facebook group for example. As fellow co-founder Alberto Barreiro said in the Wow 2.0 conference last week, “Activity is the new Content” as conversations define reputations; the role of marketing today is less and less about controlling an agenda and more and more about fuelling these conversations.

As I said in a recent article about Climbing the social network ladder in Computer Business Review, “Companies need to make followers aware of the brand, not just the medium”. The issue is not to look cool by having a presence on the latest web2.0 sites but to show that you are actively listening and reacting. That won’t happen by keeping separate a “safe” official site and a few groups/feeds here and there. Both have to mingle and brands need to be comfortable with what they want to say about themselves sitting alongside what people say about them by :

• Creating a fully branded, customised  social media environment serving as the hub for their social media presence on the web;
• Aggregating the flow of conversations about themselves, putting them into context and re-sending these to key networks on the web;
• Managing and fostering communities, offering customers a destination to check out on buzz & reputation.

We facilitate that process on Webjam by enabling our clients to create such Social Media Hub(s) so as to generate the activity levels required for the collective construction of their brand identities.

Written by Yann Motte, Webjam CEO

It can take years to build a brand, but you can lose your reputation in an instant.

In his Social Media Marketing Industry report “How marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses” from March 2009 (http://www.whitepapersource.com/socialmediamarketing/report/), Michael Stelzner quotes that the number-one benefit of social media marketing is gaining exposure. A significant 81% of all marketers interviewed indicated that their social media efforts have generated exposure for their businesses.

Some companies feel exposed because of this and others see this as an opportunity to get closer to their customers. The question social media marketers have to ask is, “Am I willing to let others shape my brand or identity without my input?” More and more companies today don’t want to lose control of their brand so they open themselves up online.  They understand that if you interact with others on any level in the online world you involve them in shaping your brand or identity. For some this happens on a greater scale than others, but it is happening. Online communities are increasingly considered the norm for online interaction. The size of these communities is getting bigger and bigger and they simply cannot be ignored. And the tools they are using can make minor discussions become large events.

There is another dimension to this. Social media networks and tools spread perceptions of brand or reputation like wildfire. It gives a new meaning to “Word of Mouth”. This passing of information from person to person has been around for a long time but never really featured on the radar screen of marketing professionals in large organisations. It was more relevant for small companies, particularly operating on a local scale. But nowadays, Word of Mouth is different. The online publishing tools available to people today make the spread of information much easier and faster. Before companies realise, the idea of a perception has become a reality. If numerous people are sharing a feeling towards a company within their online social networks, their friends start to share this feeling in their network and the perception becomes reality at an exponential rate. And furthermore, with Social Media, public sentiment is documented, searchable and ubiquitous.  What is said today will be available today, tomorrow and 10 years from now.

Social media networks like facebook, linkedin or myspace and social media applications like blogging, micro blogging, forums etc. empower communities and individuals like companies have never seen before: Giving them the power of online conversations and connections, bringing a new dimension to “word of mouth”. Enabling them to influence the way companies build their brand and develop their reputation. I call this Brand Inversion.

Written by: Marc Campman - Webjam Director of Marketing