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Explaining social media to the dog (and aggregating audiences)

John Wagner recounts having a hard time getting some advertising colleagues to come round to the idea of using RSS / aggregation of very specific and relevant news and content to reach a niche audience for a B2B campaign.

I left a lengthy comment which I thought I would post here too, as it sums up an approach to explaining social media to colleagues and clients that is mostly successful:

What’s worked for me is starting with the Big Why, not even for the newsfeed or the blog, but the overarching macro-trends that are affecting the media, business and society as a whole.

Before I get people to think about engaging / using a new media I share  quotes from people like Rupert Murdoch and Tom Glocer of Reuters, talking about just how big and fundamental the changes  to the world are going to be.

Then I explain the fundamental shift that has happened in the means of production and distribution of media and give historical parallels to show how significant those changes are. Only at this point will I explain what RSS is and why it is literally going to change their world.

And after I’ve explained how it all works I round up with a nice quote from Forrester about how social computing will soon touch every role in every organisation in every part of the world (i.e. don’t think you’ll be able to keep your head down and this stuff will pass you by).

This approach generally works quite well for me so far. You’ve got to allow about 20 minutes to half and hour to walk through, but people will generally be a lot more open to thinking about engaging with social media after that.

I would add that Mr Wagner’s approach of aggregating for a niche audience to attract them to your feed is a brilliant one.

In some of the studies I have done of online communities and networks with colleagues at Bell Pottinger, we have come across a phenomenon of gaining authority and audience by aggregation.

Steve Rubel is a great example of this effect. Many people knock his theories and analyses but there is no better aggregator of PR / Web 2.0 content out there. And that relentlessness and reliability has built him an audience and (some) authority in the PR / web networks of blogs.

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Antony Mayfield

3 responses to “Explaining social media to the dog (and aggregating audiences)”

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Open (finds, minds, conversations)…: Explaining social media to the dog (and aggregating audiences

    A summary of how to explain social media to non-expert audiences and how aggregating content can win niche audiences.

  2. John Wagner Avatar
    John Wagner

    Antony:

    Thanks for your thoughts on this topic … very helpful.

    I think that some industries are just so far away from these trends that even explaining the “why” is difficult. But of course, time will change that, too.

  3. Chris Heuer Avatar
    Chris Heuer

    I think it needs to be clear that aggregating is not anywhere near to the value of editing – the value Steve adds is in editing what he sees, filtering it and adding his opinion. This is why people will pay for the WSJ online – the value within their editing is top notch – they are an excellent filter and produce a great signal to noise ratio. If someone just aggregated a bunch of feeds, that may be simplifying the RSS Feed reading processes of a large market of people, but it won’t be of value over the long term if that is all the site does.

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