Beyond The Ordinary (A.K.A. Facebook And Twitter)

by Joe Mandese, Jan 24, 2012, 12:37 PM

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That’s right -- despite their relatively short lives (in analogue years, anyway), Facebook and Twitter have now reached the point of being deemed “ordinary” media platforms by one of Madison Avenue’s biggest digital and traditional media services organizations.

Actually, you can throw LinkedIn and YouTube into the ordinary consideration set too, Michael Wiley, chief social media officer at Publicis’ VivaKi unit, said this morning during his opening keynote at MediaPost’s Social Media Insider Summit in Key Largo.

Wiley wasn’t suggesting that it is time to move on from those social media biggies, but simply to move “beyond” them so brands can achieve “sustained engagement in 2012 without necessarily having Facebook and Twitter at the core.”

“It’s difficult to think about things we’ve done that don’t have those at the center,” Wiley said, implying that the major social media platforms -- for all their relative newness and scalability -- are still a sea of sameness that agencies and brands need to move beyond.

It was almost as if Wiley was giving a speech at an industry search summit 10 years ago, saying it was time for Madison Avenue to think beyond Google. Maybe that analogy doesn’t exactly fit, but you get the idea.

Wiley wasn’t just winging it. His message has been informed by working with some really big brands firsthand, and also by looking at research, including IBM’s recent “From Stretched To Strengthened” study, which surveyed big CMOs and found an important conflict: The majority consider social media one of their top priorities, but also feel that it is giving them “a major headache.”

So what’s beyond Facebook, Twitter, et al? In this order, he says, they are:

1) Mass Influence (He cited Klout as a good example.)

2) Social CRM

3) Gamification

4) Cause-Marketing Re-Imagined

5) Ascending Content Platforms (Wiley cited Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram)

As much as Wiley touts these new “beyond” platforms, he was a little skeptical about the first iteration of Klout, a social platform that indexes a user’s clout among his or her social community. Wiley said he was critical of Klout’s early algorithm, mainly because of some firsthand experience. When his wife's friend was expecting twins, for example, she used Klout to tell others about it.

“It said that she was an influencer about the Minnesota Twins,” he recalled, adding that Klout has since fixed its algorithm. "Today, I am a firm believer in Klout. It is a great way to get mass influence.”

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