Today I saw an article in the Minneapolis Star/Tribune titled:  “Med-tech is shy on social media use.”

Among other things it praises a  medical device start-up for its innovative and viral use of  YouTube.  However, it goes on to explain that big medical device and other health care related companies are hesitant to use social media.  The writer points to legal concerns, especially retribution from the FDA as reasons for this.

Indeed, it would be foolish for Medtronic, St. Judes and other medical device companies to rush into the social media wave pool. But guess what?  It’s not foolish at all, providing they take the right approach.

With millions of people tweeting, posting to blogs, commenting on or posting videos to YouTube, chances are excellent that each of these channels are ripe with conversation about medical devices.  Just monitoring and amplifying these conversations hold huge value for an entire organization.  I know; I do this for several health care companies.

From the marketing manager to the CEO, the ability to listen to the unbiased conversation between your company’s staunchest supporters and most stalwart detractors provides insight and direction that no focus group or traditional market research investment ever could.

One need not chime into the conversation.  Remember the old adage: “You become wiser by listening than you do by talking.”   And guess what, no one will even know you’re in the room – not even your lawyers.

Am I off base here?  Is engagement the only real goal for a company with regard to social media?  Or does listening provide enough value on its own? What do you think?

I wonder how many Taylor guitars United Airlines would give to Dave Carroll now that his scathing music video blasting the airline has been viewed 1.4+ million times on YouTube (as of this writing). What’s more, I wonder the level of regret UA has now that the popularity of the playfully acidic video has hit traditional media including big city papers and the major cable news channels.

A nice Taylor costs about $2,500. If I was in charge of customer service at United, I think replacing the guitar broken by baggage handlers with a nice collection of about a dozen new Taylors would be a nice gesture today. I’m sure they could have gotten off much easier had they admitted their apparent mistake and just replaced Mr. Carroll’s Taylor.

Too late.

United Airlines might have been able to ignore the voice of a single unhappy customer in the past. But businesses had better wake up to the fact that the voice of that single customer can now reach millions of potential customers via YouTube, Twitter, FaceBook and other social media channels. And when traditional news media gets wind of that groundswell, look out.

So what can businesses do? Is it enough to just treat customers as if they matter? Or do all businesses need to engage in brand monitoring via social media? Will online brand monitoring ever become as important as market research Or is it already?

The next question is always… Why such growth and how should companies best to take advantage of these amazing statistics? Any thoughts? More to come soon.

Twitter:
- From March 08 – 09 Twitter grew at a rate of 2,565 percent – Nielsen. (Ning was number 2 at 283 percent.)
- Roughly 2.4 billion Tweets… on average about 11 million per day and growing – Giga Tweet

YouTube:
- 300 million users worldwide – YouTube.com
- 14.8 billion video “views” as of January 2009 – Comscore
- 147 million U.S. Internet Users watched on average 101 videos per person in January 2009 – Comscore
- Roughly 43 percent market share of video viewing as of January 2009 – Comscore

Facebook:
- As of February 2009 Facebook has the highest monthly active users of any social media site. – Compete.com
- 200 million active users. (Currently closer to 225 million)
- 100 million users log into Facebook daily

Tuesday, China’s government has blocked Internet users access to Twitter. Though there has been no official statement from the Chinese government, it is likely due to the approaching 20th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square. The Chinese government may feel that this will curb any negative conversation that may have occurred otherwise.

This is not the first time China has blocked various social media sites, as they had a ban during the run-up to the Beijing Olympics in August 2008.

There are other reports that other social media sites have been blocked, including Flickr, Bing.com, Blogspot, and YouTube.

My question: would there ever be an appropriate time for the United States Government to block Internet users access to a site?

What is Social Spamming?

Communicating with others and sharing information has never been easier than at this very moment in time.  Duh right?  But at what point do these millions upon millions of messages per day become a bother, nuisance or ultimately considered “spam”?  When does forwarding a message on Facebook, or adding constant self-promoting tweets on Twitter cross that boundary into Social Spamming territory?  Martin Bowling (@martinbowling) a fellow Twitterer feels that social media spamming “isn’t about dropping an occasional link, it’s about constantly promoting your message & not giving back.”  I would have to completely agree with Martin.  Whether posting a friend on Facebook, commenting on a blog post such as this one or joining a Twitter conversation, social media is something that is to be shared, collaborated and enjoyed by all.  There are no percentage points or thresholds that must be crossed, rather the common barometer that states you are now adding to the clutter rather than the conversation.  When writing this post I was unable to find a true definition of social media spamming so here is my personal attempt: Social Spamming: The act of receiving or sending unwanted messages and pieces of information via a social media platform.  Hmm… Not bad.

How is Social Spamming being controlled?
Social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace are quickly trying to crack down on social spamming, mostly in the form of reporting groups/users and deleting door-to-door messaging offenders (promoting your page or group by going to random pages and posting your link or message).  Monitoring social media raises even a bigger question:  Should social media sites control what people do within their environments?  Does this go against everything that is so great and powerful with social media and the Internet in general?  Another great example of cracking down on social spamming is Twitter.  Perhaps allowing people to un-follow others is their less abrasive form of controlling social spamming; more-or-less giving the power to the people to self regulate what content they receive.  Aaron Weiche (@AaronWeiche) of Five Technology and avid user of Twitter commented on social spamming via Twitter by stating, “Lots of gray area to consider. I’m following you, so I have a filter to un-follow. Audience, context, control, all factors.”

Where do we go from here?  Not too sure right now, but I do know Social Spamming will without a doubt be a phrase that is used much more as time goes on.  It will also be interesting to see how social media sites continue to control the amount and quality of content that is being displayed and how people react to this regulated environment.