The following is a guest posting from Randy Bennett, vice president, New Business & Audience Development at NAA.
On April 29, I attended paidcontent.org’s Economics of Social Media conference in Los Angeles. The event covered topics ranging from online video to traditional media role in social media to advertiser perspectives. Full coverage of the event is available at paidconent.org.
Here are a few highlights:
“Social Media is the New Local.”: So says Marketwach.com founder and venture capitalist Larry Kramer. We all know that the Internet has redefined consumers’ perspectives on “community.” New social media tools, according to conference speakers, have accelerated that shift. While a few speakers acknowledged that local (i.e. geographic) community is still important – and profitable – social media tools have elevated the importance of extended communities (friends, business, shared interests), or, as almost every speaker defined it, users’ “social graph.”
The “Activity Web:” Fabled venture capitalist Geoff Yang described the emergence of the Web as a platform for “social activity” like visiting a mall. Web publishers, he advised, should focus on how to leverage social media tools to facilitate social activity such as shopping, gaming, site seeing, etc.
Monetizing Social Media: Several speakers focused on the need for marketers to get into the conversation in a non-intrusive way. In other words, be relevant without being obnoxious. Kinsey Wilson, executive editor of USA Today, said “advertisers want to be associated with new and innovative, but at the same time, they want the safe and proven.” Another theme was that “monetization follows audience.” Speakers suggested that you don’t need “mega-hits,” as long as you’re attracting a loyal audience that advertisers care about.
Yahoo! EVP Jeff Weiner said the challenge is “to identify consumer ‘intention’ ina social media environment. How can we identify and serve advertisers based on that intention?” (e.g. marketing to two people communicating about sushi restaurants in L.A.).
And MTV’s EVP of digital advertising Nada Stirratt offered four challenges for making more money:
1) Get into the results’ business
2) Gain scale with a broader portfolio
3) Provide better ad sales service (operations, processes, bodies)
4) Learn how to thread advertising into the middle of the conversation
“Curators of Content”: The notion of Web publishers, including newspapers, as curators of content, has gained much traction. The strategy is to aid users’ discovery process by providing the tools, organization and editing that will lead them to relevant, and quality, content. USA Today’s Wilson described his company’s three-pronged “curating” strategy, which includes 1) producing original content, 2) facilitating content creation through social media tools, and 3) aggregating/tagging content to provide relevant results.
Similarly, Sports Illustrated’s digital chief Jeff Price said his company’s strategy includes: unbundling its content from the Web site, building programs to sell content wherever it resides and using SI content and tools to empower conversations happening on the social networks.
Steve Wadsworth, president of the Walt Disney Internet Group, shared their strategy of “creating quality content and building a consumer base around that content that is sustainable for the long term.” Disney is not creating a platform (which aggregates thousands of small communities). Disney is providing context: leveraging brands into large communities with a common purpose.
For more information on these sessions and more, go to www.econsm.com.