Citizen Journalists – Get ready to Network

CNN IBN recently updated its website and now it aims to add another feature to it by January 2008 – that of Social Networking.Social Networking can be used to engage users to brands. Conversations can be created around the brand – this is always a good thing because the brand can have top of the mind recall and active engagement – something a marketer could not even dream of 5 years back.With the increasing simplicity of creating social networks for brands, one will gradually see a scenario where most of the top brands will create avenues for users to engage themselves in. Over the next 5 years, a social network may even become a given for consumers.The obvious question that arises then is – but what about clutter?Brands will then need to differentiate themselves with respect to the purposes their social networks fulfill.Not all social networks will survive. Only networks that go beyond the usual features of blogs, games, videos, pictures etc. will actually succeed.Again the point is – is there a ‘generic benefit’ that the Social Network is propagating. 

For more on that read my ongoing series on Technological Innovation. 

In the series I also wrote about Nike Plus, it’s a social network that allows users to create custom maps and compare their stats with each other. The generic benefit that Nike Plus ‘discovered’ was that runners always like to show off the amount they run to others – they like to talk about it. Here is a way of sharing it, and also having tangible proof. Then there are always the usual extra features that make users feel in ‘control’.   The point is that social networks for brands need to break the ‘social networking’ paradigm as we currently know it.

In terms of the future social networking – I see users being affiliated to 1 main social network, and then being affiliated to a host of niche social networks. They may be business related social networks, journalism related, sports related. There is then a limit in terms of how many social networks people would join. I would say the maximum is 5 networks per person.  

Brands thus need to relize how to leverage the key audiences – audiences that are suitable for a particular social network and audiences that can be engaged.This is something that WATConsult, our sister concern specializes in. For brand related social networks, I think engagement will matter more than numbers – and it should, especially looking to the Future.  

Coming back to IBN Live, I think their social networking platform will be nothing more than a blog where users generate content. They will have the usual video, audio, picture, word combination. 

 I think the Network might help them to: 

-      Create more content and thus give readers more options to look at. This may cause readers to spend more time on the site and thus have better engagement with the brand.

-       They can discover potential journalists who are of a high quality and tuned to both broadcast as well as   Internet journalism. 

-       Monetize content created by others. 

The challenges are:

-      How will they maintain the standard of the content and reduce spam.

-       How will they give ‘citizen journalists’ an incentive to stay?

The firm can benefit greatly from focused marketing. This will get the right people to engage with the brand.I also think that they will leverage their own network to popularize the service i.e. existing CNN IBN employees. 

 CNN IBN I think has got one thing spot on though.IBNLive intends to integrate mobile into the social networking section. So far, users needed to be online to submit their photos and videos. Following the revamp, mobile users will be able to send their photos and videos directly from their GPRS-enabled mobile phone to a specified email address.This is smart because most of the ‘reporting’ is not going to happen through specialized cameras or any other equipment in most cases. This makes the ‘citizen journalism’ more accessible – most of it will happen via mobile and the push to upload only saves the consumer time and gives him an incentive to upload content.I think it would be a good option to pay ‘citizen journalists’ per item viewed. This gives them an incentive to upload more content and more content means more time spent and more engagement and greater monetization opportunities for IBNLive.