By Helen Falk and Tekla Szymanski

 

“Twitter is over,” declared Erin Byrne, one of the panelists at the Dec. 1, 2009 Cocktails and Conversations event “Decoding Digital — How to Embrace the Change and Successfully Navigate New Media” that was held at AOL. “It had its day. People are moving on.” The evening was dedicated to pointing to its likely successors, and to find out if, indeed, Twitter was on its way out and what role social media will be, and are, playing in branding and marketing. It was a lively discussion.

 

The panel consisted of Erin Byrne, chief digital strategist of Burson-Marsteller; Dina Kaplan, co-founder of Blip.TV; Erin Matts, chief digital officer from OMD; Kristine Welker, past NYWICI president and VP of Sales and Marketing for Hearst Magazines Digital Media, and moderator Dorian Benkoil, co-founder and SVP of Teeming Media. 

 

The panelists largely agreed that social media are not a stand alone tool any longer in branding and marketing but a part of a successful overall communications plan. With social media, you need a story to tell; once you start, you just can't drop off or you run the risk of losing connections, and if you are taking a break at telling that story, be sure to give the reasons why. “Your audience expects content from you,” added Dina. “You don’t have to produce for all audiences. Figure out your niche and own it. It’s rude to start and build an audience and then walk away. You need to build a consistent relationship and create a two-way dialogue.”    

 

The consumers determine what content they want to pay for; it’s about finding out what they want and how they want to get it. The key to any good site is the data you collect from that site to effectively segment your population both digitally and traditionally. And with database marketing, the more robust data you collect the more effective you can be and the more you can measure the effectiveness of your campaign: Why did they come to your site? What method did they use to find you? Was it word of mouth or a recommendation that made them decide to check out your site? Your data is the key to improving your story and your relationship with the consumer or client.

 

No matter what channel you are communicating in, your message needs to be clear and crisp and keep your audience engaged. Media is media, whether off- or online. Asked about the future, the panelists mused: The future will be in data analysis and marketing the data and the emergence in media buying and selling. The credo was that we need to be talking now about “performance metrics” instead of “measurement metrics.” And we shouldn’t underestimate that we are marketing to "influencers," who spread and share the message to millions of others — thus giving authenticity to a brand.

 

And what will the next platform of the future be?

Dorian: “Bio-chip implant?”
Erin M.: “Augmented reality.”
Kristine: “From a content standpoint: Sit back and embrace what the users are interested in and embrace the social media tools.”
Dina: “Roku and BOXEE and new ways to merge your professional content watching with your web-based content. Users will make an active decision what they want to watch.”
Erin B.: “Web 3.0 the Semantic Web. Process information and mash it up. Organize data. Also: social TV and convergence of social networks via the TV screen.”

 

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