Forrester Research’s highly respected Charlene Li kicked off the second and final day of the second annual New Communications Forum at the Sheridan Palo Alto Hotel. Like Rebecca Blood on the prior day, she was extremely well-received.
Li advised corporate communications professionals who dominated the audience of 180 that they “have to let go of company-generated messaging, because technology is moving the power out of their hands and placing it at the fingertips of end users. This same ubiquitous connectivity is making geography irrelevant as it allows the easy formation of worldwide communities comprised of highly mobile individuals.
She showed Forrester Research data that corroborated earlier-released statistics from the Edelman Trust Barometer that indicated people trust their peers more than any other group, certainly more than designated corporate spokespeople. The implication might help explain the extraordinary power of the blogosphere, where endorsement—and criticism—comes from people like ourselves, rather than out-of-work actors or paid communications professionals.
“The result is that the firms are becoming irrelevant,” she said. “Brand loyalty is dropping. “
Defining “social media” as a social structure in which technology puts power into communities, not institutions,” she counseled companies to benefit from it by giving customers what they want. As one example she discussed a Forrester client, US Cellular who started a blog to find out what customers wanted and discovered what annoyed users most was paying for minutes when someone called them. The result as they started offering an unlimited inbound service option which has proven popular.
She noted that peer-to-peer communities are forming that are selling goods, content and services that completely bypass corporations, which have historically enjoyed a top-down position in any marketplace positions.
An observation we had not previously heard, which we think may have huge repercussions over the longterm was that the social media are building communities that have greater loyalty to each other than to their own governments, a view that strikes a chord at our own blogging experience.
She also estimated that 11 percent of North Americans are reading blogs, a number that nearly double one we heard less than three months ago.
The conference wound up at 2 pm yesterday.We'll have our wrap up shortly.
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