One of the most common reasons people are hesitant to integrate social media into their marketing plan is that they don't understand what the basic benefits are, or know where to start. I find it helpful sometimes to get back to basics when thinking about such things, so that's what I want to do today. Let's start with so called buzz monitoring, which is what I often recommend when someone asks me where they should start...

"Buzz monitoring" as a term has entered the social media vernacular to describe listening to what is going on out there in relation to your company. In the main this refers to looking into any mentions of your brand on blogs, in social networks, in forums etc and, if appropriate, responding to them or taking some sort of action, even if it is just to make a note of it. It isn't just about mentions of your brand though; look at what your competitiors are doing; see what hot topics are being discussed; and look at what is going on in your industry.

Before you can start blogging, Twittering, a group on Facebook or whatever, you have to know what is going on around you; you have to start to listen. I recommend starting a buzz meeting once a week, invite relevant people in your company to it. Task each person with looking at a different area, ideally an area they specialise in for example, whether that's a product, service or an area of expertise such as PR. Set up a netvibes dashboard (a free page where you can add and organise your RSS feeds) with each tab representing an area of interest, for example: competitors, mentions etc. Ask everyone to bring at least two things to the meeting to discuss. As well as being subjects for discussion these meetings also provide subjects for blog posts, seed ideas for future campaigns, bring previously buried problems to the fore...

You can buy automated software to crawl the web and flag up mentions of your brand (or anything else you are tracking mentions of) but it is also possible to do it without software tools, just using RSS feeds and blog search and feeding this all into one page, such as netvibes.

Spend two hours a week doing this and you will soon reap the rewards in terms of being more aware of what is going on around you. Do it for two or three months and then maybe you will feel more confident to move to the next stage... blogging (which I will post about soon)!

At the recent D&AD student awards Christian Söderholm & Dennis Rosenqvist of Hyper Island in Sweden won a First prize for their Tag iPlayer idea for the BBC. The concept is to allow users to watch media on the iPlayer as normal, but with the help of a widget they can get related, additional content through tags which can also be shared with friends. The idea is that users can find out instant information about actors, recipes and other related content.

Great idea! So how could technology companies use this type of deep video tagging concept to sell more products?

Tagging from within the video would allow technology companies to promote their products in more depth by offering links to further resources as 'asides' to the main content; in product demos for example, by adding things like user reviews, related products, more in depth information, gallery of images etc the user gets a clearer picture of the product than they would have if the video were viewed without tags. You could address the fact that people have differing levels of technical understanding by offering explanation if required. If not, great, skip the tag and go ahead with the video. As video is used more and more on e-commerce sites to show products, this type of thing is sure to become more of a requirement.

The YouTube generation are changing the face of video production. They create video content with no knowledge of video production skills, without 'proper' kit and publish it online for free. Some brands and companies, particularly in the technology sector, are following suit and also publishing videos seemingly shot on cheap camcorders by the student intern onto their own sites as well as on the same video channels. So is this the end of the road for quality video communications with the high production standards, where the UK has arguably led the world for a generation? Or are brands merely trying to fit into the Everyman Internet where we're all potential publishers?

Desktop Publishing (DTP) changed the face of print publishing 25 years ago. Did it herald the downfall of professionally produced publications with talented writers that spend their hours being paid to create interesting content (like many forecasted)? No, it didn't. Before DTP came about, the only 'proper printed' publications were professionally and painstakingly typset affairs produced by the big publishing houses. This type of printing was beyond the budget of the masses.

When DTP software became widely available many predicted that the availability of these tools would cripple the publishing industry, however it had the opposite effect once all the hype died down. The technology made it cheaper and faster for professionals to produce content – as we can see by the proliferation of magazines and books available today. It also paved the way for a younger generation to have access to new ways of expressing their creative talents and became the base for many of today's digital professionals.

The same has been happening with video over the last 5-10 years; many of the facilities previously only available in expensive edit suites became easily available on a low budget home PC. The element that was missing previously was the costly nature of distributing the video. The explosion of video sharing sites (Vimeo, YouTube) has of course changed that. However we seem to be going through a similar transition to the publishing world, as naysayers announce that user generated videos threatens the work of the professional film/video producer. In my view what we will find at the end of this rainbow is an industry of creative video professionals who have never known anything different who will have injected a new lease of life into a tired industry. This YouTube phenomenon creates new ways of doing things and a much easier way of delivering high quality moving images so that more effort can be spent on the quality of the content that is being delivered - and that can only be a good thing!

I read a blog post recently that reflected what we had been talking about in the office for a while now: how brands (the ones we look at most closely is technology brands because that’s what we specialise in) are using Twitter in different ways. Specifically, how some brands are using it purely as a tool to distribute content, and others are using it as a way of talking to their customers.

Twitter is similar to RSS feeds, a well known broadcast medium, in that you use it to put your headline (limited character) content out there, with many posts containing links to read more. However, the Twitter interface allows you to view all your favourite ‘feeds’ in one place; it enables you to view who is receiving your ‘feeds’; and most importantly, it facilitates conversation between Twitterers. These are the main differences between Twitter and RSS feeds. Some brands are anonymously (the Twitterer is not named) sending out links to blog posts, news, offers etc without encouraging feedback or being conversational in delivery. I don’t think there is anything wrong with using Twitter as a broadcast medium; however I think brands are potentially missing out on some valuable insight and brand building as a result.

In my opinion it is fine to use Twitter as a broadcast medium, but I would advise brands doing this to think about adding another Twitter channel to use for conversational and customer relationship building purposes. Or maybe consider introducing more conversational tweets at a later time to your current broadcast account, once you have decided on your style and approach to conversational Twittering.

To get the most out of Twitter I think a brand should take advantage of all the different ‘hats’ a Twitter account can wear: customer service tool; broadcast medium; opinion tool; brand builder. You may choose to do this using several different accounts, as many of the larger brands do (be careful to track activity of all your different Twitter accounts though to retain consistency and work together in the best way possible) or in one account.

Josh Bernoff comments in this recent Groundswell blog post that social media is simply another communication channel. It sounds obvious, but his point is a good one: stop freaking people, social media is really just about communicating with others; sharing and connecting with folk! It's not THAT different to what we were all doing before. So why are people panicking? Well, he's right to suggest that it's the emphasis on conversational reciprocity of this communication channel that sends shivers down the spine of many a marketing person. That makes us all sounds like anti-social freaks though. But really what freaks people is just that it is new. Talk to customers, you say, but isn't that what our PR firm / customer services team is for?!

As Josh always says, what is key to successful engagement using social media is for brands to listen - and talk back - as corporate employees. Yes, you do work for this company, but yes, you are a human too aren't you? When conversing with people via social media as an employee it is, of course, important that you filter what are saying in the same way you would if you were at an event in the same capacity, but that doesn't mean that you have to be a robot.

Technology companies should be ahead of the game when it comes to social marketing because their customers will be, that much is clear, but their customers will also be the first to get annoyed if they ask for help or reach out and don't get a reply. So keep your ears peeled.

BabelWithMe is a real time multilingual conversation tool that is free to use. I think it will take off in some form; it certainly has lots of potential. One of the main problems we encounter when helping international technology brands communicate in a social sense is doing it in multiple languages.

Too often this holds companies back when they are thinking about how they can embrace digital communications within the social space. Take Twitter for example: shall we translate one Twitter feed into many different languages? Sometimes the time it takes to translate kills the spontaneity of the message. The other alternative, having lots of different Twitter accounts for all different languages isn't always possible, for many reasons. Besides, sometimes when using Twitter as a broadcast tool you want to have unity over the messages you are sending and this is harder if 20 different people are Twittering for you.

If BabelWithMe worked alongside Twitter somehow, then this would be real progress. Similarly if you could embed it, it would be even more useful. For now, I think you could utilise this BabelWithMe tool to continue the conversation in one place. You could encourage people to use it as a neutral site to send users to, after a webinar perhaps, or during an event to have a multilingual conversation. Let's wait and see what becomes of BabelWithMe; we predict big things!