Video: Evolution of Social Media with Esther Lim (3:00)

Categories: Social Media, VideoPosted on February 15th, 2008

I was able to meet with Esther Lim, Principle of Interactive Services at Crimson Consulting Group in SF. She’s been working with social media before that term existed, (or Tim O’reilly) and I had the chance to ask her how things have changed. I often say that we’re in year 3 of 10 years of growth for this industry, although in certain areas saturation and normalization of these new communications styles occur faster.

What You’ll Learn

Find out how online discussions happened before that term social media existed

Moving forward to 2008, she discusses how companies have changed their attitudes, and what’s driving adoption

Terms that she thinks are over hyped

Typical pitfalls that companies fall for

Share This Post:

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 2:28 pm and is filed under Social Media, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Hi Jeremiah,

It was really great talking to you about the evolution of social marketing. What is really exciting to watch is all the activity around mobile networking that will allow us to access those online conversations and relationships whenever we want, wherever we are. We at Crimson are keeping a sharp eye on that and I will be interested to follow your point of view on this.

Posted by Esther Lim on February 15th, 2008 at 5:38 pm

You did a great job sharing, thanks Esther.

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on February 16th, 2008 at 6:41 am

Jeremiah,

Great video; thanks for the interview and adding it to your site.

What are your thoughts on Esther’s comment that we need to drop the term “listening”? You mention this is one of the key reasons for a company to engage in social media in your recent Forrester publication, but Esther seems to think that listening simply isn’t good enough.

Is a company truly engaged in social media if they’re simply listening, like a fly on the wall, rather than directly responding and/or participating to the conversations that are already happening out there?

Regards,

Seth

Posted by Seth on February 16th, 2008 at 10:54 pm

It’s very clear to me that companies need to engage in dialog, but in order to that first, employees of a company first need to listen. So I think we all agree.

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on February 16th, 2008 at 11:10 pm

Hi Jeremiah,
Great to see Esther rather than just hearing her! I’ve been working with Esther and Crimson for a while now and appreciate their approach to social marketing.

My experience is that the biggest challenge to create the dialog-seeking culture is to find a way to give traditional business leaders a taste of what it’s like in the Web 2.0 world. Words alone don’t do it. Any ideas?

Posted by Pete Steege on February 20th, 2008 at 8:42 am

In response to Pete’s comment -

From my experience the best way for more traditional business leaders to get a taste of Web 2.0 / Social Media is to show them the conversations that are going on that they aren’t involved in, and the tools that enable them…this seems to pique their interest. Most executives aren’t even aware of what is being said about their company, products, etc. It’s usually an eye-opener!

If possible, to get executives to experience social tools first hand is usually a big step forward. Its one thing for them to read about FaceBook or Blogs - another for them to see what their competitors are actually doing to leverage social tools as a way to enable their customers in a conversation.

Optimal of course would be to get them to participate in some social initiative. Crimson’s CEO got the religion when he started blogging himself because then he really understood the potential power of blogs as a marketing tool for our clients.

Posted by Karen O'Brien on February 20th, 2008 at 9:12 pm

I find that CEOs that start a blog internally tend to grasp the concepts in a comfortable starting point.

The real world can be much different as employees many not feel comfortable voicing their true opinions.

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on February 20th, 2008 at 9:48 pm

[...] been doing social marketing since early 2000 before there was such a term (see my interview with Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester Analyst and thought leader in social computing). Back then [...]

Posted by Have Enterprises Really Adopted Social Marketing Practices? | Achieve Market Leadership on February 27th, 2008 at 9:45 am

[...] been doing ethnic marketing since primeval 2000 before there was much a constituent (see my interview with Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester Analyst and intellection cheater in ethnic computing). Back then [...]

Posted by Have Enterprises Fully Embraced Social Media Yet? | B2B Marketing Blog on March 19th, 2008 at 3:11 pm