Social Media NZ relaunches to make social media useful to audiences outside the ‘twitterati’

The communications industry and their clients will be out in force next Tuesday at a seminar and drinks, hosted by Simon Pound, for the relaunch of news and opinion site Social Media NZ.

Launched last week, the site targets social media and technology news, trends and commentary to a more mainstream audience with articles from top-level business people, academics and regular contributors.

(Of particular interest to ad creatives is former Saatchi’s creative Helen Steemson’s article titled, ‘The role of the ad creative in emerging media’. Steemson now heads up creative at new model communications agency, The Common Room).

Says Social Media NZ’s founder and creative director, John Lai:”Businesses know these new media are important but often don’t see howthey can get commercial value from them.

“We get fed lots of success stories, but not really any reasons whythey were successful or how other businesses can do the same. We wantto give people that understanding to make social media suddenly seemlike really effective, usable tools.”

The company has partnered with collaborative communications agency, The Common Room for the relaunch.

Their head of digital engagement, Hayden Raw: “Social Media NZ’s shiftwill help businesses use the platforms more effectively, by making theinformation more relevant.

“A lot of the twitterati are propounding to be experts; they’re greatat the social media tools but don’t have the expertise in other areas;they know how to use a hammer, but don’t know where to put the nail.Social Media NZ’s contributors are experts in their fields who alsohave insight into how social media can be useful to their industry,whether that’s branding, trades services or internal comms.”