Yesterday, after the Oscars, the general news media from CNN to the New York Times began speculating on the way that micro-media like Twitter could change the way that national broadcasts are produced. Richard Robbins, the director of social innovation at AT&T, was quoted from a tweet as saying, “In future, live show producers should have contingency plans to make on-the-fly changes when social media chatter shows trainwrecks.”

It’s a great pie in the sky idea, but let’s face the facts. Most businesses do not move at this speed, and probably should not move at this speed anyway. It may even be a little short sighted to make strategic decisions for a television show (… or a product or service) on the fly. Just In Time (JIT) businesses like Zara and Toyota are quick to meet consumer demands, but they are not that fast. Reportedly, Zara takes about 2 weeks, compared to the traditional 6 months, to develop a new product and get it into stores. But it may be unrealistic to think that businesses can provide valuable product at the speed of thought.

One of the problems with over-hyping social media is that many companies are ignoring some of the most valuable parts of this form of communication as a result of these unrealistic ideas. It may be a safe bet to assume that next year’s Oscar telecast will not include a contigency plan for negative feedback from social media, but we are finding that this often leads companies to ignore aspects of this data that could help them.

After a major event, campaign or product launch listen to the conversations leading up to the launch and right afterwards. We would advise the Academy to figure out what messages the overall conversation conveyed. Not just single posts, but the WHOLE conversation. Segment those trends and volume reports across different time periods and for different aspects of the event (presentation, red carpet, nominees, etc.). From these segments, the Academy can begin to understand what works and what does not.

For the next event, campaign or product launch, use learnings from the previous analysis to start out on the right foot. Social media is about experimentation, and the second experiment should be better than the last. Analyse the whole conversation again three months, two months and one month before the next launch, and continue to change the way you market and to whom.

Navigating social media marketing can be difficult and unknown territory. If individuals are talking about your organization on these channels, they are providing something valuable. But social media is not a one-size-fits-all type of medium. Match the speed of your business with the level of data you collect. Not only will the task become more manageable, but strategies will be more coherent within the context of your business.

I spent tonight at the World Affairs Council here in San Franciso listening to Jay Walsh, Head of Communications at the Wikimedia Foundation, talk about his organization.  The talk was titled: “A New Model for Global Collaboration”, and it was a deep dive into the history and size of the Wikimedia Foundation.  What I really want to talk about is what brands can get from wikis in general, as well as from Wikipedia, but here are the basic numbers from his presentation:

• 275 languages
• 340M unique visitors in a month
• 100,000 volunteers (about 10% who contribute more than 100 edits a month)
• 5th largest site globally according to ComScore (after Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook)… and it’s a non-profit
• Over a 1B edits since Wikipedia got started in 2001

What I think is really interesting is the total number of languages that are covered across the various Wikipedia sites as well as the sheer volume of the articles and edits.  We are not talking about straight translations of the English site, but rather unique versions on the same topic area.  A simple search of “Nintendo” in both Spanish and English will show that there are differences in both entries, and as Nintendo there is a lot you could learn about cultural and political biases or preferences by looking through these entries.  Collaboration tools like wikis across languages can help brands get a very focused idea about what a “neutral” point-of-view believes.

For large global brands like Nintendo, Coca Cola or Sony, organizations can begin to make observations across countries, languages and cultures as they look to bring products or services to new markets.  Jay presented a number of studies where Wikipedia in certain languages were broken up based on the type of content that they searched as well as the countries that searched within specific languages.  Undoubtedly, a corporation like Procter & Gamble or Pepsi could conduct similar types of studies on a more granular level.  Here are a few of the examples that the Wikimedia Foundation have put together from a macro-persepctive.

To take my Nintendo example one step further, the organization could look at how the company and its competitors are percieved across continents and languages.  Differences in opinions across games, genres, etc. could result in better content development and marketing campaigns.  Console decisions and strategy could be tweaked based on what certain groups look for out of gaming.  We are talking about research for marketing, strategy, sales and product development all through wiki analysis.

While we typically advise clients to use Social Media and wikis to manage their brand, I think there are some other very big implications of using wikis specifically.  By analyzing this level of data across wikis (which happen to have the advantage of being user-generated and social, while being seen as “neutral” through their unique crowd sourcing style model), a company can take advantage of global brand data that can help them make decisions across a number of topic areas in a very focused manner.

There are surely some specific segments within the population heavily engaged with social media which can be highly lucrative.  If you happen to have a business that attracts these segments, you can make a lot of money.  And I think as we look to which segment is having a very real impact on Internet based businesses, we can see that social media marketing works extremely well with the Type A “Mommy Bloggers”. 

This is the group that has money to spend and the web-savvy to blog, tweet and be a part of a larger conversation.  We have seen this group of Type A women bring huge revenues to companies like Gilt and Rue La La, and we have also seen them have big impacts on toy and baby companies.

Recently, I had a call with a marketing director at a toy company who stressed the importance of attracting this group to their website and ultimately creating buzz around their brand.  Without a doubt, there are PR firms who can help you locate some pretty influential bloggers out there, but it got me thinking about how a company really needs to make this a part of their “corporate blood”.

There are really two things that brands who have an interest in this group need to do.

First, find out who is talking about you, your competitors and your products.  What are they saying, and can you influence them in any way?  Think about ways that these Type A Moms can help you improve your product and ultimately sell more.  Of all the bloggers out there, this group can be very proactive in offering advice that you can act on.  Use it.

Second, get a sense of what these Type A Moms are talking about besides your product.  Can you become a part of this conversation?  This is when you and your company can go from an organization trying to sell products to a group of friends looking to help out and talk.  If you can make this transition, you have made the full leap into the target segment that you are looking to approach.  And it’ll make the selling a lot easier for you… and the buying a lot more appealing to you customers.