Social Customer

Taming the Social Web

Integrated Services for Social Media Management, Monitoring, and Moderation 

By Matthew Lees

We all — both as individuals and as organizations — are still figuring out how to deal with social media…how to use it effectively both personally and professionally (without letting it become too much of a time sink), how to make it work hand-in-hand with the other things we do, how to know when there's something we should know about going on, how to know when just to listen and when (and how) to jump in, and how understand and (ideally) measure its effects.

To help with all this, a cottage industry has sprung up around social media management, monitoring, and moderation. It's part content management, part market research, and part CRM, but it's all about (1) helping organizations get a handle on what's happening throughout the social Web and (2) make it easier for them to deal with it.

The Social Web = social sites and networks throughout the Internet where your customers, prospective customers, users, subscribers, and others are = blogs + Twitter + Facebook + YouTube + MySpace + Technorati + Delicious + LinkedIn + …

Social Media and Online Security

When I joined Twitter last year to keep track of some Visionary clients, I never dreamed I would become so addicted to it. I would probably embarrass myself if I shared with you just how much time I have spent over the past year and a half scrolling through endless tweet streams, “listening” to and barging in on, other peoples’ conversations, and sharing random thoughts with the world at large. Once I mastered Twitter (I can quit anytime!), I moved on to Facebook, and LinkedIn, and so on and so forth. What is it about social media that keeps us going back for more?

As humans we crave interaction with and recognition from our peers, and now that we have various forums in which to do so, we sometimes have an inexplicable need to let the rest of the general population know what we’re doing, what we’re wearing, and what or where we just ate. Some of us even post pictures of our meals to help our schedule-challenged friends feel that they are right there at the table with us, ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the newest, most creative presentation of steak and mashed potatoes (Oh look! It’s the mountain from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind!”). Unfortunately, in putting ourselves so far out there, we can also open ourselves up to unwanted attention. For example, someone in your offline world whom you’re not expecting to see could show up uninvited to a gathering you’ve planned, simply by searching for your name or handle on the Internet and finding your intended location.