Ciarán Norris is a digital marketer specialising in SEO, social media marketing & online PR. Ciarán is based in London where he works as the Head of Social Media at MindShare. Mindshare is a media communications agency employing 6,000 people in 67 countries delivering integrated media solutions across all channels and platforms.
Q1. What are the most important social media platforms at the moment?
It’s a bit of a cop-out, but the most important ones are those your customers are using. Obviously Facebook is the giant of the channel, whilst Twitter gets all the hype, but if you’re in Asia, neither of those are available in China, whilst Orkut is still strong (for now) in Brazil & India. In the Philipines Friendster is still massive (no, really): just because you read about a site in the papers all the time, doesn’t mean it’s where your customers are.
Q2. How do you see Social Media has changed the advertising communication?
There have been huge claims made for how social has destroyed the old advertising model, but I don’t think that’s quite true. What it’s done is enabled advertising, or marketing, to be created in such a way that consumers can truly get involved.
Kris Olin, MSc (Econ.) * Editor in Chief at Social Media Revolver * Web Designer * SEO Specialist * Author of the Facebook Advertising Guide. Follow Kris on Twitter and LinkedIn. See his photos at Flickr.