Are WE Social Enough?

As a member of the WeAreTeachers marketing team, I like to follow blogs that provide insight into market strategies, brand and community engagement activities. Interestingly enough, I came upon a audio post by Jeremiah Owyang, a well respected leader in online marketing, blogging and social media. In his latest report with Forrester, they selected 16 firms across four industries and found only one company worthy of accolades (BMW). What makes BMW a social marketing winner? In part, it’s that the automobile manufacturer managed to avoid the most common pitfalls, which is still where most firms fell short.

Some examples of those easy-to-make mistakes: creating marketing programs that aren’t self-fueling, that don’t encourage members to participate in conversations amongst themselves and that don’t include some amount of participation from the corporation, itself.

(Forrester Report: Best And Worst Of Social Network Marketing, 2008)

Jeremiah discusses his findings with Jennifer Jones in this Marketing Voices podcast.



I think this report / audio post can apply to other industries or organizations including schools, disricts and school leaders. Classroom 2.0 is one example that I would list as a social network that adheres to many of the success elements that Jerimiah refers to. WeAreTeachers is also striving to self fuel the engine and allow members to engage with other members and participate in conversations among members. Share ways that you or your organization has found best practices for doing this.