A new Forrester Research report argues that in order to succeed, marketers should discard top-down communication in favor of collaboration.
Forrester Research's recent report -- Social Computing: How Networks Erode Institutional Power, and What to Do About It -- covers the tactics that companies should employ to thrive in today's era of Social Computing.
Forrester's key conclusions in this Report emphasize that companies should:
- Discard top-down management and communication strategies
- Use employees and partners as marketers
- Incorporate communities into products and services
- Become part of a living tapestry of brand loyalists
Marketers and strategists not only have to embrace these tactics but also act as role models on approaching customer relationships while also engaging and redefining community in Social Computing.
"This is one of Forrester's most forward thinking pieces of research to date," says Steve Rubel, senior VP of Edelman, author of the Micro Persuasion blog and an iMedia contributor. "For marketers, the analyst group recommends we should: let customers be the brand; become aggregators of content that's not our own; and become more transparent, but not too open that we endanger consumer privacy."
Where does Social Computing come from?
Contributors to the Wikipedia describe how Social Computing emerged from Computer-Supported Collaboration (CSC) research that "focuses on technology that affect groups, organizations communities and societies, e.g., voice mail, chat." And that this research "grew from cooperative work study of supporting people's work activities and working relationships."
These studies show that user-generated content and communication are changing the rules of business that Forrester defines as "a social structure in which technology puts power in communities, not institutions."
According to Forrester, "Social Computing encompasses fast-growing peer-to-peer (P2P) activities like blogging, RSS, file sharing, open source software, podcasting, search engines and user-generated content." Other applications include social networks, user review portals, consumer-to-consumer electronic commerce (C2C eCommerce), comparison shopping sites, wikis/collaboration software and tagging.
Companies pioneering the use of Social Technology include facebook (social network), Feedburner (Really Simply Syndication or RSS), MySQL (Open source) and TypePad (Blogs).
Even the mainstream community can dip into these social technologies, harnessing the power to change social norms. Forrester describes the three main powers driving technological and social change as pioneering youth who internalize the use of technology, aging consumers motivated to connect with society, and an integrating worldwide audience.
With community at the helm and with the availability of evolving technology -- powerful network processes, low-cost hardware and connective software -- mass accessibility accelerates and social forces gain momentum. These forces significantly impact marketers striving for a competitive edge.
Why is Social Computing significant for marketers?
According to Forrester, the three tenets of Social Computing make collaboration relevant to marketers. The three tenets are:
- Communities driving innovation
- Institutions facilitating experiences shaped and owned by communities
- Communities taking power from institutions
These tenets are significant to marketers because of credible statistics gleamed from Forrester's research in Social Computing. The statistics indicate that 47 percent of marketers use or plan to use RSS feeds, 56 percent of U.S. companies use open source software (versus 39 percent in Europe), and a further 19 percent in the United States plan to use open source software (versus 29 percent in Europe).
Furthermore, 51 percent of marketers use or plan to use blogs with 79 percent of marketers using or planning to use search marketing. Similarly, 79 percent of U.S. online consumers use search engines weekly according to 2005 results.
Although percentage rates for social networking, online auction activity, use of P2P networks and podcasts are lower, Forrester reports that, "as more sites attract a worldwide audience, global networks will be common." What these results suggest is that Social Computing is just on the verge of impacting business operations.
Forrester's findings also suggest that an escalating number of socially-connected buyers are less brand-loyal, less trusting, and more independent. The change is partly because buyers expect brands to meet higher standards and also because they prefer to customize products or services for their own use. Another factor is consumer reliance on information from peer-to-peer networks.
To maintain relationships with new and existing customers, businesses and marketers will need to evolve with their changing audience of consumers by translating their current strategies into strategies that embrace Social Computing.
What Social Computing strategies should marketers adopt?
Forrester recommends these approaches:
- Use a new Marketing Tool Kit
- Implement a bottom-up customer-driven innovative approach
- Embrace Social Commuting as a value-added asset
- Redefine the role of marketers
Next: The New Marketing Tool Kit (Page 2 of 2)