If anything, it’s a people-powered change. Peer-to-peer recomendations that trump what advertising can tell us. Content created by you and me and a whole bunch of others not by white tower “experts”. What a great time to be a marketer!

@harro!: I’m not from the digital influence team… but I’ll add on to Brian’s comments.

I think its about addressing where the eyeballs are… where the attention spans are, where the conversations are and what people view as credible and more insightful. It not just applies for news… it can also apply for information, opinions, suggestions etc.

Of course, social media marketing is extremely hard work but it is vital in today’s world as social media plays such a prominent role amongst internet users. For companies who do not have a social media strategy probably have more risk than having one to test the still relatively unknown waters. I say this because if companies don’t do it now and only enter the frame when everybody else is in it, then it’ll probably be too late to make an impact.

Problems will occur and should occur. In that way the social media strategy can be optimised as it goes and in no time… the brand will probably be pretty good a social media.

In actual fact, social media plans need a dedicated group/person (varies) in the company to monitor and participate actively as the environment is constantly changing. However, it’s still a long way before companies do that as even getting many of them to test minimally is already very difficult.

So what is the most important aspect of knowing where people go looking for news?

@Harro: very true, it is a lot of work, which takes the ‘mass email’ effect out when engaging media channels (blogs and traditional media)

i believe the next step is the continued engagement of the blogosphere, and other new media channels, that they integrate with traditional forms, to reform the concept of ‘the media’.

when you think about it, the majority of people don’t just read blogs, but go online to search Google, Yahoo or other search engines, connect with friends over a variety of social networks, talk to each other via mobile phones and SMS or even Twitter and Plurk.

the next step should be to ensure that when people go looking for news, they’ll find what they’re looking for, and you wanna be there when that happens.

it’s a lot to think about, but perhaps the next step is to at least appreciate how Social Media works, and decide how you want to play your communications strategy.

It even makes an agency think 3-50 times before offering a social media solution.

So now what?