In my last post, I started to assess how corporate brands leverage social media in an integrated marketing strategy.  Part of that process includes creating content that will keep the brand visible in a meaningful way so it won’t get lost amongst all the chatter (“noise”) on the Web.  This is a complex and difficult task given the choices for content consumption that consumers have today.

From the consumers’ perspective, there is difficulty in navigating through all the noise to find the information they are seeking.  There is too much information and too little time.  Consumers have an insatiable appetite for relevant information, which is why so many social networks have emerged to fill the need, but in the end, consumers would like their social information spoon fed to them.  Most consumers define a socialgraph through their usage, profiling their likes and interests across the Web.  Generally speaking, successful technology presents a solution to a consumer problem.  A successful social media tool would be one that can take that information presented by a users’ behavior and use it to solve the problem presented by the congested flow of content.

So how does a consumer make sense of a congested flow of content?  There are tools becoming available for consumers to manage the flow of content. Ideally, consumers would have the ability to organize and filter their content so that they can consume it the way they want.  Moreover, they would like to have new, meaningful content discovered for them outside of their personal social information network, but still presented within their “trusted” network.

Also, over time, the consumer wants to compartmentalize their social content into silos of social interest, further satisfying their need for privacy and relevance- in effect creating multiple personal profiles: Work; Sport; Social; Special Interests; etc…  The challenge for the consumer is to identify the most productive tool available for their use, and subsequently put it to good use.  This can be somewhat frustrating given all the widget, gadgets and applications in the marketplace.  Later, we’ll explore some of those options.

Next:  The Brand Engaging With Their Audience

The Author:  Mario Martinez is CEO of Intellectual Capital Associates, an investment banking firm  which has offices in Beverly Hills, San Francisco and Singapore, and is an investor in Perssonas, Inc., based in Beverly Hills, CA.  Perssonas provides an enterprise technology for corporate brands, content publishers, and content networks which hyper-aggregate cross-social media content into a conversation with its audience.  As the audience is engaged with the content, the technology filters and analyzes the user’s behavior to recommend more relevant content for the user-experience. Perssonas’ core technology is a real-time data aggregation platform that provides brand/content/network publishers with the ability to track and analyze how its social media content interacts with its audience. Martinez is a former communications executive with AT&T, Sprint and Computer Sciences.  For more information, contact

mm@intellectualcapitalassociates.com

www.perssonas.com

So how are corporate brands leveraging social media these days? As media shifts through its own evolution of socialization, of most concern to the brand gurus is how to maintain a clear and “visible” voice amongst all the competing content and mediums available to a consumer today- the “noise”.  Equally as important, is how one controls and manages the voice of the brand in a social media landscape full of user-generated content.  It’s not easy.  Whether you are a brand specialist or a Chief Communications Officer of a major corporation, you have a difficult job getting your brand recognized the way you’d like, let alone heard across all the new media outlets.  Moreover, how do you “listen” to what the audience is saying about your brand and content?  The evolution of media towards social media allows the brand to see direct consumer feedback, but one must effectively track and manage that conversation.

As brand and content distribution models evolve, it’s critical for a brand manager at any level to grow his/her knowledge base surrounding technology that can help manage these unchartered waters, both for the consumer and the brand.  A first step is to understand who are the key stakeholders in your marketplace and how are they looking at your brand and content.

From the consumers’ perspective, there is difficulty in navigating through all the noise to find the information they are seeking.  There is too much information and too little time.  Consumers have an insatiable appetite for relevant information, which is why so many social networks have emerged to fill the need, but in the end, consumers would like their social information spoon fed to them.  Most consumers define a socialgraph through their usage, profiling their likes and interests across the Web.  Generally speaking, successful technology presents a solution to a consumer problem.  A successful social media tool would be one that can take that information presented by users’ behavior and use it to solve the problem presented by a congested flow of content.

Next:  How Does a Brand Elevate Itself Above the Noise?

The Author:  Mario Martinez is CEO of Intellectual Capital Associates, an investment banking firm  which has offices in Beverly Hills, San Francisco and Singapore, and is an investor in Perssonas, Inc., based in Beverly Hills, CA.  Perssonas provides an enterprise technology for corporate brands, content publishers, and content networks which hyper-aggregate cross-social media content into a conversation with its audience.  As the audience is engaged with the content, the technology filters and analyzes the user’s behavior to recommend more relevant content for the user-experience. Perssonas’ core technology is a real-time data aggregation platform that provides brand/content/network publishers with the ability to track and analyze how its social media content interacts with its audience. Martinez is a former communications executive with AT&T, Sprint and Computer Sciences.  For more information, contact

mario@perssonas.com

www.perssonas.com

Our integration and deployment strategies incorporate a wide array of delivery options including things like FiosTV and DirecTV widget support.

This is an example of an overlay widget that incorporates the realtime stream from several social networks including Twitter and Facebook.   The same data can be deployed to multiple types of devices with no change to our backend engine.  User interaction is also aggregated and analyzed across platform consumption allowing us to produce highly customized and relevant data based on their past usage patterns.