Can you control the message in social media?
November 6th, 2009Trevor Cook is someone I’ve been following for some time, because of his insights in media and PR. He wrote this (altogether good) article. There was just one quote that got me thinking:
Business needs to keep perspective on social media – Corporate Engagement
The Obama campaign is the current gold standard of this approach – they controlled message but they allowed people a great deal of lattitude in the way they helped promote that message
I’ve read it a few times now, and I’m not sure.
Did the Obama campaign control message? They certainly created it, but did they really “control” it allowing people “lattitude” in the way they helped promote it?
I don’t think so. I think the reason it is the “gold standard” is because they created the kind of messages people wanted to share and promote, and then created highly targeted tools and activities to enable these messages to be spread.
In fact, had they made any attempt to control the message (apart from correcting people when they misrepresented the message), the whole thing would have failed.
What do you think? Did I miss something here?
January 27th, 2010 at 12:22 am
It is something that we are discussing with some new clients, but the best social media campaigns don’t appear to try and control the message.
Sure there is moderators who try and direct or guide the conversations/threads but controlling social media is going to take more resources that running the campaign.