In addition to having substantial experience with Hitachi Data Systems’ customer reference program, Jeremiah Owyang is a rapidly rising star in the world of social media. His own blog is in the top 1% according to Technorati. In his video show for the Pod network he has interviewed luminaries such as Michael Dell, Craig Newmark (craigslist founder) and Marc Canter, founder of Macromedia (now Adobe). He has been involved with or managed four Corporate Enterprise Intranets, and two extranets ranging from enterprises such as Exodus Communications, Cable and Wireless, World Savings, and most recently Hitachi Data Systems. He is also the Director of Corporate Media Strategy at PodTech Networks in Palo Alto, a company focused on Video Blogging, Podcasting and Blogging. And I’m happy to say he’ll be presenting at our next Customer Reference Forum on April 24. To learn more about Jeremiah, check out his blog, Web Strategy by Jeremiah.
Today he’s sharing thoughts on the rise of social media and its coming impact on reference programs.
Q: First off, what is Social Media? What is Social Networking? How are they different?
A: In the taxonomy of the Internet, “Social Media” is the larger family and “Social Networks” are a sub- class within that family. One analogy could be Social Media = all paper publications, and Social Networks are paper magazines, just one subset.
Social Media is the superset and encompasses many tools such as Blogs, Podcasts, Wikis, forums, tagging software, videoblogs, mashups, as well as social networks.
When I think of “Social Networks”, I think of MySpace, LinkedIn, FaceBook, Xanga, CyWord, and Club Penguin. Most of these websites require users to register, provide some profile information, and often (but not always) limit the community to participate within the confines of its domain.
Q: Will social media make marketing obsolete?
A: No, it makes savvy Marketers more relevant.
Marketers are traditional one-way message creators. With Social Media, this forces Marketers to join these conversations of communities that are forming (even if corporations don’t participate) and be part of a two-way dialogue that matters.
Customers will be telling marketers exactly how they want their products, information, and services, and that is an opportunity to become better and more accurate marketers.
Q: What’s the best use of Social Media you’ve seen that’s relevant to a reference manager (by a B2B company, if possible)?
A: Hitachi’s CTO is a blogger, and on one key post he asked for feedback on products. A few vocal customers responded in detail about their experiences with Hitachi products (both positive and negative). We then involved the product teams in responding and learning from this free ‘focus group’ information.
Our CTO then referred to these posts from his own blog. It was an authentic Customer Reference initiative that was not influenced by Hitachi to be positive. One would only expect a prospect reading such dialogue to have a higher degree of trust in Hitachi.
