The Mechanism of Social Media

In preparing for the upcoming ad:tech 2010 conference, I drafted some initial thoughts around a session that seeks to explore how we can create and identify more business value from social media. There are several threads to consider in that discussion so here are some thoughts on each of those over the next few posts.

Firstly, an understanding of the mechanism of how social media works creates a very useful foundation. Social media is a lovely, unstructured channel for communications and feedback. The session appropriately highlights that its value potential comes from how it is used as a three-way messaging channel. Three-way because people either seek opinion, offer opinion or observe opinion. This blog captures and defines that concept with Australian market research.

In the commercial world, messaging either drives or erodes business value. But how does it do that? Specifically, how does social media do this? That question is at the core of understanding how to build more value.

Essentially it’s a special kind of WOM. The research confirmed what many suspected: WOM that pans is more powerful than WOM that praises. This is because more people are told and the advice is weighed more heavily from friends. There is also a status gain at play whereby good advice boosts status of the advice giver.

So in sharing advice and opinion freely, peoples attitudes are being influenced. Its fair to say that not all communications will change attitudes. Much of it will be neutral or reinforce existing attitudes. But lets say we are seeking to understand and change people attitudes so we will focus there.