Social media and analyst relations is one of the half-dozen topics that almost every respondent to the AR Forum survey scored as being highly important. Symantec’s Patricia Valuch will be speaking at the AR Forum about that, and I had an interesting discussion today where we discussed some of the key issues. Patricia is a great choice because she developed Symantec’s global social media influencer programme while working in the UK, and has brought that insight into the firm’s marketing and analyst relations work.
Right now, there are four general maturity levels for AR people using social media.
- Watching. Many AR practitioners are not actively and consistently using social media. Many firms have not give anyone the authority to speak for them. At the best they are watching what analysts say.
- Shouting. Other firms use social media to broadcast their views, but they are not really sharing or discussing.
- Chatting. Many programmes are engaging in the regular to-and-fro of online discussion in order to build rapport with analysts.
- Shaping. Very few firms are using social media to really leverage AR and shape the discussion by promoting the research of supportive analysts.
The four stages came up in the call, and looking around for something similar it resembles a presentation by EDA which you can find here. The last point on shaping seems interesting to me, since it connects with the talk that Kevin Lucas will give on how to raise the profile of positive analysts from their natural levels. I think it will also tell us a lot about the intersection between content marketing and AR. So, we’ll make sure that Kevin and Patricia are on the same panel to see what we can spark in the discussion Of course I’ll be keen to ask about measurement in the discussion too!
