How social technologies are changing business

This session was presented by Jennifer Rice, a brand strategy consultant. The presentation addresses blogs, wikis and forums, peer to peer networks, but mostly emphasized blogs.

Many aspects of our society are becoming fragmented, disconnected. The web helps re-create those connections. How we connect with people is changing, social networking.

Rice gave some good examples of how blogs can be a platform for communication outside of traditional channels also discussed the notion of the connected consumer. Consumers can do many things to affect your brand in a positive way using social technologies. Examples ranged from discussion forums where expert users of your products can answer questions from newbies to distributed storefronts. “You’re no longer in control of your brand” you can direct it, but there are other influences.

The impact on business by using social technologies includes:

• Community moves from closed to open
• Intelligence moves from individual to collective
• Authority moves from hierarchical to distributed
• Production is moved from dictated to collaborated
• Marketing moves from awareness to engagement
• Marcom moves from spin to authenticity
• Business – takes burden to “spin” off of marketing to operations to focus on a better product

One interesting observation was that perhaps some of the best marketing some companies can do is to improve customer experience rather than advertising.

Overall a very good session although, with the exception of one question afterwards, did not mention social networking sites like linked in, soflow, Yahoo 360, etc. I agree with David that this session should include a panel in the future with Rice moderating or participating.