Jeremiah Owyang discusses how web tools and social media enable companies to connect with customers

Social Media effective during Recessions

February 06th, 2008 | Category: Forrester, Social Media

Several analysts at Forrester (Josh Bernoff as lead, with Charlene Li, Christine Spivey Overby, Jeremiah K. Owyang, Shar VanBoskirk) put our heads together to discuss how the rumblings of a potential recession, and if so, how social media will thrive.

We concluded that Social Media, which tends to have lower costs than other forms of marketing (commodity tools) can be very cost effective for those wanting to get customers to spread and share messages. On the other hand, marketers need to be careful, because doing it wrong will result in more work, and in some situations, brand backlash.

When I was the Community Manager at Hitachi Data Systems the cost of the forums was a few hundred dollars a month for cheap blogging/forum/wiki/flickr software. The biggest cap was the blow out social media event, Lunch 2.0 where we hosted 10 data hungry web companies, over 250 people showed up, all for an event cost of $5k, plus a lot of labor.

Of course, the largest cost was my time to manage these tools, and align the objectives with the company, and a great deal of evangelism (a combination of education and cheerleading). The end results? The brand spread, hundreds, if not thousands of leads were gathered, and I know of at least one web 2.0 company became a customer for ongoing annual revenue 3-4 times my former salary, still to this day.

Josh has given more insight to if and what to do if there’s a recession coming, and we’ve even made the report available for free (which is usually for clients) for download, please note you’ll have to register if you’re new to the site.

15 Comments so far

  1. Social Media Costs Less, if You do it Right | Contagious Solutions February 6th, 2008 10:11 am

    […] comparison to typical marketing and communication campaigns, social media is much cheaper. Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research recently met with other experts in the field to discuss how effective social media would be if we […]

  2. bizwriter February 6th, 2008 1:39 pm

    Allow me to repeat here the same comment I made at Forrester (I got a fluffy answer there):

    But don’t you think that in order for social apps to “thrive in a recession” the numbers must be there? But it seems that they are not.

    “not” = http://creativecapital.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/its-official-us-social-networking-sites-see-slow-down/

  3. jeremiah_owyang February 6th, 2008 2:14 pm

    Bizwriter

    I saw your post, interesting analysis, I certainly see a conflict in many different reporting numbers.

    Please share the URL to those comscore numbers where you saw that.

  4. Recession-Proof Marketing: Forrester Says Social Marketing Will Thrive in Economic Downturn February 6th, 2008 5:57 pm

    […] group of my favorite Forrester analysts, including Jeremiah Owyang, Josh Bernoff, and Charlene Li, got together to discuss how this potential recession might affect […]

  5. Recession-Proof Marketing « small dots February 6th, 2008 7:29 pm

    […] 6, 2008 by BethDunn Josh Bernoff and several of his colleagues (including Jeremiah Owyang) at Forrester released a free report today about why interactive marketing, also known as social […]

  6. One Man's Recession is Another Man's Profit | Engage in PR February 7th, 2008 6:48 am

    […] when discussing the benefit of social media. Much has been discussed around this and certainly go check some of those out. What I wanted to talk about is, if this is true (and again, I believe it is), […]

  7. Social Media and Social Networking Starter Kit for Business at Fast Wonder Blog February 9th, 2008 8:56 pm

    […] and a few have jumped in to participate, but not in a way that is productive. According to Jeremiah Owyang at Forrester, participating effectively in social media may be even more important in times of recession. In the […]

  8. Now Is Gone » February’s Most Influential Bloggers March 2nd, 2008 10:52 pm

    […] can’t possibly be anything more this guy has to offer, bang, another shot over the fence. Recessions, employees vs. companies, interviews. Keep it going, […]

  9. Widgets: The Marketer’s Recession Survival Tool April 26th, 2008 2:02 am

    […] Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang points out that social marketing costs far less than traditional marketing. So when purse strings […]

  10. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » ウィジェット―景気減速時代を生き延びるマーケティング・ツールの決定版 April 27th, 2008 2:34 pm

    […] さらにForresterのアナリストJeremiah Owyangはソーシャル・マーケティングは伝統的マーケティングの手法に比べてはるかに安上がりだという点を指摘する。今後会社として財布のヒモが締まるにつれて、マーケティング担当幹部の興味は、比較的安い金額で顧客への露出が指数関数的に広がる、ソーシャルメディアに向かうようになるだろう。 […]

  11. socialinnovation3.com » Blog Archive » Widgets: The Marketer’s Recession Survival Tool April 28th, 2008 8:21 am

    […] Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang points out that social marketing costs far less than traditional marketing. So when purse strings […]

  12. ¿Es Social Media el extremófilo del Marketing? | Denken Über May 1st, 2008 7:41 am

    […] soy tan optimista como Jeremiah como para andar diciendo que el Social Media va a ser efectivo durante una recesión. Tengo la tendencia a mantenerme del lado mas moderado. Simplemente voy a […]

  13. Unfortune June 11th, 2008 2:18 pm

    […] Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang points out that social marketing costs far less than traditional marketing. So when purse strings […]

  14. Answer - How effective is Social Media? | Whooah.biz September 5th, 2008 2:02 am

    […] http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/02/06/social-media-effective-during-recessions/ […]

  15. How to start a Social Network | Digital Swimming October 22nd, 2008 11:51 pm

    […] http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/02/06/social-media-effective-during-recessions/ […]

Leave a reply