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Brands fail to capitalize on Twitter marketing opportunities

During the spring of 2009 we received requests from our clients asking our opinion on the need for their brands to become (more) engaged with social networking sites.  The demand was so great that we held a client webinar on the topic.  One of the areas discussed was the potential of the social media phenom Twitter.

With 100 million users tweeting 65 million times per day, Twitter is a site that should be difficult to ignore by marketers and consumers alike.  However, the reality is anything but, according to a recently released white paper published by the digital marketing agency 360i titled “Twitter & the Consumer-Marketer Dynamic”.  After an analysis of more than 1,800 tweets published between October 2009 and May 2010, the researchers concluded that brands are under-utilizing the Twitter platform, and consumers are far more focused on personal tweets than on professional or promotional updates.

The unexpected findings are that “while consumers use Twitter as a conversational medium, most marketers aren’t using it that way and there remains a ripe and largely untapped opportunity for two-way conversations between brands and consumers.  Currently, a mere 1% of brand mentions by consumers on Twitter represent dialogue between brands and consumers.”  

360i researchers provide some actionable advice, stating “Marketers could benefit from looking for ways to engage consumers more fully on Twitter through a more conversational tone (e.g. asking questions and inviting response rather than simply passing along information).  Encouraging and participating in a dialogue with consumers will encourage more re-tweets, as well as help promote deeper brand relationships.

The fifteen page report illuminates the reader on topics such as:

*who is tweeting?

*what do consumers tweet about?

*the anatomy of a tweet

*which brands are mentioned most often?

*motivations behind consumer brand mentions

Hopefully the report by 360i will ignite interest amongst marketers to step back and revisit their Twitter strategy.  It is an easy and interesting read, and acts as follow-up to our webinar on social media engagement.

What does the math say about social media?

Recently an acquaintance of mine had a very unpleasant experience with a major retailer and I began to wonder what options the person had to convince the retailer that it was in everyone’s best interest to resolve the matter as opposed to leaving my friend unhappy.  The reality is that we all have had a negative encounter with customer service in one form or another.  From working in the hospitality field, I have first hand experience with people who had been met with what they believed to be poor service.  The lesson I learned very early on in hospitality, and which I believe to be true in most industries, is not that the customer is always right, but that they believe they are. With the growing popularity of social media this lesson is becoming more and more relevant.

In April 2010, a study based on an online questionnaire conducted by the Harris poll provided hard numbers which seem to validate the concern that companies have over their image being presented via social media. There were previous assumptions that social media users were limited to teenagers following celebrities, which was shown to be incorrect. This poll suggests that users from 18 to 55+ have very little hesitation in using social media to either promote or condemn a product or service by discussing their experiences. Not only are users prepared to share their experiences online, but what is more interesting are the numbers regarding how influential the opinions of people that are in their social media groups or friend lists actually are.

According to the numbers in the study, approximately 29% to 45% of people “agree” or “strongly agree” that their goal in offering opinions through social media is to influence their peers or groups. Additionally respondents answered that 69% to 76% believe that friends or family influence their decision to use or not use a particular company or product.

In a nutshell, this means that a third to half of people who participated in this study use social media to influence others and almost four out of five people say that the reviews of their friends or family via social media influence their use of a brand or company. What is additionally interesting is the decline in influence of celebrity endorsements which only yielded a maximum of 17% amongst 18 to 34 year olds (the youngest demographic polled) who believed reviews from celebrities influenced their use of a brand or company.  Another interesting finding is the influence strangers have via blogs or message boards. The study showed that 41% of 18 to 34 year old respondents were swayed by the opinions posted by people they don’t know on message boards or forums.

It therefore appears that brand monitoring and the management of the public perception of one’s company or products requires a much more proactive approach. It is imperative to manage the disappointment experienced by customers before they have an opportunity to share their negative experience with others. Applying the example of hospitality, the alternative to taking a proactive approach would be to allow an unhappy customer to express their negative experience on a message board such as tripadvisor.com or other third party services designed to provide additional revenue such as expedia.com or hotels.ca, which could potentially have a directly detrimental affect on a hotel’s bottom line.

With social media and internet reputation management becoming increasingly available, companies and brands can now take a more proactive approach. Being aware of a negative reputation is as crucial as taking the correct measures to address the potentially harmful affect on a brand or companies. However, it is also detrimental to pursue these matters incorrectly or too stringently. On certain occasions it is more effective to protect your brand or image by requesting that the individual or group remove content rather than taking immediate legal action to force the removal of content. The difficulty lays in how to sift through the thousands of blogs, forums and other social media outlets. This is where contracting the services of an internet management company would come into play. They are able to consult and advise a company on the most tried methods of gauging your brand or product’s online reputation.

Companies should consider creating their own social media best practices and training in-house employees to engage in conversations and respond to negative comments that could be indentified by a service such as social media monitoring. Some companies have taken the option of setting up social media groups and fan pages that are dedicated to their products and services as a proactive measure.

Regardless of the approach one takes to social media, it is here to stay. Be on top of the game to ensure that current and potential customers are getting the right message from your company directly. Don’t hide from negative criticism, but opt to engage your critics in a way that is mutually beneficial to all parties to ensure you are truly protecting your brand.

Facebook, Your Privacy Settings and Avoiding Identity Theft

Can you go a day without checking your Facebook? Are you concerned with your privacy? Over the past 2 months, Facebook has been a hot topic in social media news regarding privacy; with the rise of Facebook phishing scams, malware and identity theft, more people are concerned with how their personal information is being used. Since Facebook was launched 6 years ago, it has become a central hub of social networking. People share more and more personal details about themselves by the second, through status updates, joining groups, personal interests, photos etc – the world has definitely become more connected. But what about privacy?

You can very well write on your status “I am on vacation in London, shopping at Oxford Street” Before you know it, your account can be compromised with hackers sending out messages to all your friends with something like … “hey, I am in London, I got robbed, I have no money, can you please Western Union me some money?”  Robert McMillan for Computerworld states how Researchers at VeriSign's iDefense group found a Russian hacker by the name of Kirllos who put up “1.5M stolen Facebook ID’s up for sale”.  This pertinent information could be used for all kinds of identity theft scams. Here is a helpful article that lists the 5 Facebook Scams You Should Protect Yourself From.

With countless changes, improvements and added features to the site,  people are confused about their privacy settings.  I came across an interesting article by Kurt Opsahl, Electronic Frontier Foundation, illustrating a timeline depicting Facebook’s shift away from privacy. When Facebook first started off, it was a private space for discussion which was soon transformed into a space that gave people a platform to communicate in many diverse ways. It opened up individual social networks but also became a tool used for advertising. The complex changes and added features on Facebook have critiques and some government regulators in countries fear that this will create a sense of confusion for users when it comes to their privacy settings. A recent article by Sophos states,

“93% of Facebook users would prefer Facebook's privacy options to be opt-in rather than opt-out. That said, a few months prior, we found that:
46% of Facebook users accepted friend requests from strangers
89% of users in their 20s divulged their full birthday
Nearly 100% of users post their email address”
Between 30-40% of users list data about their family and friends”

The recent rage around privacy and Facebook gave rise to a “Quit Facebook Day on May 31st.” Let’s face it, although this created a sense of urgency for the company to act upon the privacy controversy, “Quit Facebook Day” fell flat and not many people quit. The reality is that Facebook is popular and gives people great ways to stay connected. If you are a Facebook user, educate yourself about protecting your privacy on Facebook, think before you click on any links and who you accept as a friend. Alison Diana from InformationWeek  points out how “In the last five years, Facebook's privacy policy has grown from about 1,000 words to today's 5,830 words, according to the New York Times”. This gives more reason for users to start paying more attention to their privacy settings and be informed.  Facebook, recently tried to simplify their privacy settings along with providing better resources for their audience. For more information, people can now “Like” the Facebook and Privacy group where you can get updates, information on how to control your privacy settings and also give feedback.
Here are a few measures you can take to protect your Facebook account and information:

  1.    Be watchful of what you post and who you accept  as a friend

  2.    Don’t click on any suspicious  or “tempting” links

  3.    Be mindful of Malware

  4.    Make your contact information private. Personal information on your profile, like email address, telephone number, home address, date of birth should be set to private/hidden on your profile. Also do not ever post your phone number, BB pin or email address on a friend’s wall

  5.    Protect your photo albums – there is a Facebook Privacy page where you can customize who can see your photo albums. Remember, if you select “Everyone” that means your photo albums are basically public for everyone on the internet to see

  6.    Keep in mind , Facebook does  share  information you make public to third-party applications. You can  now opt out of this;  follow these recommendations  by Sophos for Facebook best practices: application and website settings. I encourage you to take a look at this as it gives great advice and simple instructions

  7.    You can also go to Account Settings and under “Account Security” you can select “Yes” to receive notifications for logins from new devices or other computers.

Lastly, educate yourself and others and be proactive when it comes to sharing and privacy.

 

Revisiting Identity Theft Email Fraud - 101

Daily, even hourly, we hear about email fraud; perpetrators who use sophisticated software (malware) to track every single one of your movements on your computer- including passwords. Scary stuff, and definitely an area in which we are still complacent. How do we inexplicably click on a link we know we shouldn’t?  Or what about that tempting email in our spam folders which looks so legit? Remember, it arrived in your spam folder for a reason. Delete. Delete. Delete. We all have received the emails from Nigeria begging for money on behalf of a kidnapped aristocrat in destitute circumstances- or so they say. Those are almost passé now given the massive growth of Social Media along with the cyber pharma industry. Interestingly, I received an email this week from Facebook about resetting my password. NOTE: I do not have a Facebook account.  Many “experts” believe the next great frontier of crime will be through Social Media sites. Users openly share personal information, such as stating when they will be away from their homes and for how long. Users become so immersed within these sites that they do not even realize they are exposing themselves to potential mischief. Moreover, your email accounts are directly linked to these sites. One can read daily the countless attacks on popular sites such as Facebook and Twitter. These are wonderful sites which do have a purpose, but it is time to be more vigilant. 

Some basic ways to protect yourself against email fraud are:

1. Do not open any attachment if you do not know the sender
2. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is
3. Do not engage in transactions from unsolicited emails
4. You did not win 20 million dollars by not entering a lottery
5. No bank or social media site is going to ask you to re-set your password; this is a prototypical phishing attack

  
This may all seem like common sense but as our lives become more immersed with passwords and the technologies that come with them, a little re-enforcement can go a long way.

How a Tweet almost brought an Airline to a Screeching Halt…

A single incident on a single flight, one of several hundreds or thousands of flights scheduled on any day could potentially be deterimental to the public perception of an airline. Southwest Airlines recently discovered the importance of reputation management and how a quick response to an attack on their reputation via social networking is integral to offset the backlash created by a disgruntled passenger.

If you haven't heard the story on any major television network, read about it online or any printed publication, recently film director Kevin Smith encountered some difficulty while travelling from Oakland to Burbank. Smith, who by his own description considers himself "fat", purchased three return tickets for a convention he was attending.  On his return to Burbank he was ejected from the plane citing safety regulations. Smith, renowned for his sharp wit as a screenplay writer did what most customers that have encountered unsatisfactory experiences do, he complained. Smith feeling rightfully humiliated and wrongfully ejected from a flight to which he had purchased three tickets took to his Twitter account and seemed to know the gravity of his actions posting: "You [messed] with the wrong sedentary processed-foods eater!"

Complaints and negative experiences are unavoidable in customer service and the impact of the complaint can be very different based on the situation. For example, if the manager of a restaurant knows that a food critic for a major publication is eating in his dinning room he is well aware that this particular customer's negative experience would be far more detrimental than that of other patrons.  This is due to their ability to share their opinion with a much larger group of people than most would through the traditional means of word of mouth.

Southwest was very fortunate to have a diligent employee who was monitoring the company's Twitter account (over a weekend) and was able to negate some of the reputation attacks which proceeded to overwhelm the company's customer service department. Several customer service attempts to resolve the situation were posted on Twitter and attempts to contact Smith via his Twitter account which had become viral were noted by those who had joined in attacking Southwest's reputation on Smith's behalf. Several individuals following the incident went as far as defending Southwest and agreeing that Smith should have been removed from the plane while others commended Southwest's attempts at a providing a satisfactory resolution. Southwest's admirable attempts at a resolution were reported on Mashable.com.

The aftermath of this incident included Smith recording podcasts which were available on his website and through Apple's Itunes which millions have access to.  A public apology was offered by Southwest airlines as well as an undisclosed amount of money spent to combat the negative publicity generated by this story.

Another interesting aspect of this incident was the documentation of the entire exchange between Southwest and Southwest supporters and Smith and Smith supporters for casual observers to view and formulate opinions regarding the handling of the situation. The lesson to be learned by any company that is reliant on its public reputation is that any customer now has the ability through social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube to make a very public situation out of what was once a containable resolution....so make sure you are using a SMART social media monitoring tool!

Policy for Blogging and Social Media Participation

I’ve been surveying the myriad of articles listed on this and thought a simple summary would be helpful to share, given the amount of interest that’s been expressed on the subject. 

 

Below are some of the biggest risks to your company when employees are using social media:

 

1.    Nothing is “off the record”

Your company may be liable for "personal" social-networking messages, regardless of whether you even knew your employee was posting them.

 

2.    Inadequate transparency

Many regulatory bodies now require that you make sure that anyone promoting your wares disclose any benefit they may receive from you in their reviews.

 

3.    False endorsement

While your product might sell better if you make up fake reviews and post them, false-advertising claims can lead to significant liability if caught, not the least being the backlash from “duped” consumers.

 

4.  Predators are lurking

 

Fraudsters are routinely seeking ways to develop confidences that can enable them to obtain confidential personal and corporate information.

 

5.  Lack of guidance

                                             
Whether or not it is officially allowed, your employees are Linking In, Friending and Twittering without any idea that they may be putting your company at risk.

 

With these risks in mind, here’s a top 10 list of considerations for companies to share with their employees and partners, as part of the below sample policy statement:

 

 Sample policy statement:

 

Social Media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube, as well as Forums and Blogs are exciting new avenues expressing creativity, and sharing interests and knowledge. Participation in these online communities is therefore supported. As social media is fairly new and constantly evolving.

  

The following Guidelines and Best Practices are for employees who choose to engage in social media. These guidelines will help understand the safest ways to engage to help protect personal and professional reputation, when posting on the firm’s behalf.

 

Guidelines and Best Practices for Employees:

 

1. Be open and honest - Be honest about who you are. If you have been given permission by your manager to represent us in social media, then state this openly. If you choose to post about us, please identify yourself as an employee or a board member/share holder.

 

2. Always provide accurate information - It is very important to make sure you have your facts straight before you post.  Better to verify your information, than to post inaccurate information and then have to retract a statement.  It helps to provide sources (news links, blog, forum links, etc) to back up your post.  If you provide information that is inaccurate, admit to it and provide the accurate information.  The community will respect your honesty.

 

3. Be respectful – Don’t say anything your Mother would not approve of.  You should always be yourself, but be respectful of others’ opinions and values.  Even in communities where discussions tend to be volatile, remember that you are your organization’s representative, so take the high road and remain even-tempered.

 

4. Be a valued member - Try to contribute information that others will find valuable, quality over quantity is better in this context.  You should only share information if you think your community will benefit from it.  Social media communities frown upon extreme self promotion and it can lead to people blocking/un-following you.

 

5. Think before you post - Even if you are in a private section of a social networking site, you should be careful about what you post.  Search engines can use bots to pull private information and people can copy and paste your comments to public areas which can easily be found.  Avoid saying something you will regret.

 

6. Maintain confidentiality - Do not post confidential information or material information that has not already been publicly disclosed.  Do not share any proprietary information. Always be ethical, if you are discussing a situation involving any clients or employees, be sure that they cannot be identified.

 

7. Be respectful of time - Computers and work time are to be used for firm-related business. You can post during working hours if your comments are related to your work or help you obtain information to solve a problem or complete a task. Personal social networking activity should be done from your home computer outside working hours.

 

8. Be prepared - If you feel there is an issue that requires your manager’s immediate attention do not wait as social media “issues” can spiral out of control very fast.

 

9. Be “On Brand” - If you have the approval to create a social media site or video on behalf of the firm, make sure you are using an approved logo and other images.  Make sure to consult with the marketing department to ensure coordination with other promotions.

 

10. Be thoughtful - If you are unsure of whether or not it is appropriate to write about a specific issue or topic ask your manager before you post

 

Social Media Innovators Continue to Amaze!

The level of creativity and ingenuity shown by some social media marketers in engaging their customers in a web 2.0 world is truly astonishing.  While many non-media companies such as Nike® have successfully used media-type tools to quench the growing expectations of their followers in social media platforms, other organizations are using challenges to educate and inspire their fans.

By way of an example, let's take a look at what LEGO® is doing in the social media space.  Back in August the company launched MoonBots: A Google Lunar X PRIZE LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Challenge.  Here is some information from the company about the contest:

"The new contest will challenge small teams comprised of children and adults to design, program, and construct robots that perform simulated lunar missions.  We want students and their parents to understand that they can tackle difficult engineering problems and generate important new ideas regardless of their age or their background-and that they can have fun doing so.....The competition will encourage the participants to use free software tools such as Google's SketchUp, LEGO's Digital Designer, National Instruments LabVIEW, and Google's YouTube platform to delineate how their entry will be constructed and how their team will function....  The mission of the LEGO® Group is to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow, and we hope that the MoonBots Challenge® can be part of fulfilling that mission".

I am excited about this challenge and look forward to returning to the corporate web site to see how it is progressing.  Although my niece and nephew Izabella and Cody already have some LEGO® sets, with some of their pieces being artifacts inherited from their dad, you can be sure they'll be getting more this Christmas!

By now it should be apparent that it is risky for marketers to shut out social media applications from the framework of their overall marketing strategy.  If you have not yet taken the plunge into the world of web 2.0 I have a few suggestions to help you get started and to ensure you do your social media marketing right, right from the start:

• Form a social media committee within your organization that includes members of your marketing, legal, IT, and security staff. Charge this committee with the task of learning about the various web 2.0 platforms available.
• Formulate a web 2.0 strategy, deciding on which platforms can be best leveraged to reach and develop your community.
• Don't spend money on platforms your client base never visits e.g. maintaining a Second Life presence if your demographic is over 60.
• Continue to keep up to date with new technology and use where it is a good fit e.g. iPhone applications
• Entertain your followers so that they keep coming back. Many brands are acting like media companies on web 2.0 sites even though media is not their core business. Instead of blatantly advertising, entertain.
• Recruit customers to help design your next generation of products
• Hold events where information is shared, exclusive offers made and extra savings given to members of your online community
• Deliver online benefits tied to your product or service e.g. give special deals to customers that respond to Tweets you have sent out. Demonstrate the value of being connected to your community, and your customers will keep coming back
• Participate in online conversations and be transparent when responding to questions and concerns
• Develop and enforce polices regarding trademark use by company employees, affiliates, licensees and third parties
• Monitor and evaluate to ensure your presence on a social media site is a good investment. Maintaining a web 2.0 presence requires a lot of human intervention so make sure you are getting an R.O.I.

Next time we'll take a look at how brand owners can ensure their rights are protected in social media platforms.  We will also have a look at some simple tools anyone can use to help monitor their presence on line.

Understanding Social Media Discussion. Why are we getting inundated with Garbage?

With the explosion of social media and the formation of new virtual communities that are becoming bigger than countries, corporations are recognizing that consumer insights and influence will be the future determinants of success.  As a result, there is a frenzy to understand online discussion. For those seeking customer insights, "discussion-monitoring" is the rage, and "sentiment-analysis" has become the "Holy Grail".

The magnitude of this opportunity has created more than 50 technology providers of discussion monitoring and analysis software, and probably twice that many service providers that claim to be able to provide insight from the data. Even with all this activity and focus, customers continue to be completely dissatisfied by the results.  And while the data is plentiful and wonderfully presented with multicolour 3D graphs, the output is generally perceived as overwhelming and useless, and the insights are few and far between.

We at BrandProtect, as one of the earliest pioneers in this space, have been striving to understand the issues around discussion-monitoring for more than 5 years. We clearly understand that customers want insights and intelligence, but without volumes of data.

Unlike traditional mass marketing approaches where the key is to understand the "average" (What does the average person want to buy? On average do more people want blue or green?), the internet is so vast that there is no value in trying to understand the "average". The key to internet marketing is to understand the "un-average". To get insights from online discussions you need to filter out all of the "average stuff" to get to the unique, powerful emotions (un-average) which capture all of the insights.

Let me give you a couple of examples of what I mean. When "Drug Company" introduces "a new drug", there are millions of posts that talk about:  the launch and where you can buy it and why the company's stock is going to do well; and why the CEO is overpaid; and what other drugs the FDA is looking to approve; and how Obama is changing health care...... but, there may be only 3 people that mention that they were very upset because the new drug made them feel faint or dizzy. In a month, it maybe 30 people, and in another month, it may be 300 people.

The fact is that averaging how people like "the new drug" is the path to disaster. The key is finding "the-needle-in-a-haystack".

I mentioned earlier that sentiment analysis is the Holy Grail. While customers intrinsically know this to be the case, they really don't know why. The reason why everyone is frustrated with the outcome from today's search tools and the lack of insights can all be traced back to this: Sentiment.

Sentiment is important.  Why?

Sentiment is the key to uncovering the needle in a haystack. Sentiment is like a beacon of light flashing in a vast ocean of data. Insights come from people that feel strongly about something.  Its more than just uncovering that someone feels strongly about something and they are willing to write about it, and that there are thousands more that feel the same way, who couldn't be bothered (or don't know how). While that may be the case, what's more significant, is that these people are changing the way society communicates. The computer era has reduced the requirement for individuals to communicate face-to- face, and has created both the fortitude and the ability to say and to do things that would not have been socially acceptable in the past. This fortitude comes from the anonymity of not having to communicate in person, plus having the tools that the new world technology and the internet have created to allow individuals access to unprecedented resources enabling them to express themselves. A $50 camera can now create a video that can be viewed by millions.

Back to sentiment. I would like to give you our theory as to why sentiment is so important. We believe that the only sentiment that really matters is sentiment around a specific topic of interest.  When we look at blogs for example; we can assess the sentiment around a blog, or a post, or a thread, or even the person whom the discussion is attributed to, but what really matters is sentiment specifically connected to the issue that you are focusing your search on.

I am sure you can appreciate how difficult a task it is to properly extract and identify emotional attributes from written text; ignoring colloquialisms (this singer is wicked!) and sarcasm (I love this company like I love a hole in the head) to assign appropriate sentiment.  Additionally, we are challenged to identify high and/or extreme levels of sentiment because we believe that this is where key insights reside.

If all that isn't difficult enough, true success requires that the identified sentiment is attributed to a set of specific search criteria, and not a discussion in its entirety.

Given these requirements, it's not difficult to see why you are so dissatisfied with what technology is providing.....

"Stay tuned for part 2 - "How do we deal with Discussion Monitoring at BrandProtect" you won't want to miss this!

Brand reputation management - beware the customer's reptile brain!

A recent sour experience with a car rental company put my reptile brain into over-drive.

The dispute is over a small amount - about $220.

The reptile brain doesn't have complex emotions. It thinks in simple terms: fight or flight.

My reptile brain wants to fight. Maybe post a video of their shoddy customer service practices to YouTube, register a yourcompanysucks.com domain, and generally bitch and moan so loudly that their senior management gets headaches.

But I won't.  At least not yet.

Why not yet? We'll, maybe I can turn them into a customer for BrandProtect and it wouldn't be good if I slammed them publicly.  And also because it just too easy to make myself a nuisance. With the power of the Internet, it is possible for one person to tell his story to thousands of people.

This power illustrates just how effective a single "guerrilla" can be in the face of a corporate superpower.

In the past, given a superpower brand's supremacy in marketing, customer service, public relations and legal support, few rational opponents would deliberately seek a face-to-face confrontation.  It was almost always a loosing battle.

But today, any idiot, including myself, can resort to asymmetric, or David-and-Goliath, strategies. I may not win the battle but I can make myself a nuisance or even bloody the nose of a superpower by using some extremely affordable weapons such as GoDaddy.com (less than $10 to register a yourcompanysucks.com domain), Twitter, a blog, and the Flip (a hi-def video camera that costs less than $100).

Although it would only take one letter from a superbrand to make me cease and desist, the cost of just the attorney writing that letter is already way more than the $200 in dispute. No matter how simple the cease and desist, escalation from the superbrand would be costly. 

Superbrands are also seeing public relations backlash from stepping on bloggers and vocal complainers. In effect, a legal victory can still equal a PR defeat

So what should the superbrands do to protect against the asymmetric customer with a chip on his shoulder? Should I find someone to help me make a video about this company's poor customer service? What would you do?

"Social Media, I just don't get it"!

The number one comment I get when I talk to the uninitiated, and certainly the above 40 crowd, when I talk about Social Media is "I just don't get it!"  And who can blame them.  I myself struggle with the notion of how to keep up with the myriad of discussions and vehicles.  When I look at what others are doing I ask myself how do those people find the time and what value is there in following the banal conversations of the average "Twit-er".  There is much out there that would support the more cynical take on Social Media, but to focus exclusively on that aspect would be to ignore some of the more practical benefits.  According to a recent post in toprankblog.com, these include:

• Gaining insight into a community of interest - Most consumers these days do their research online before purchasing, whether or not they end up buying online. Like it or not, these consumers wade through discussions on the subject of interest in coming to their decisions, so it's a good idea to stay connected with what's being said and who the influencers are.
• Building brand visibility and authority - You can either chose to let people shape your reputation on their own or you can choose to participate. The decision is entirely yours, but most can see the merits of the latter option!
• Influencing and promoting specific products/services - Proactively providing information, either through dialogue or pure advertising on social media sites, can help to build "buzz" around these products/services
• Link building for traffic and SEO - Creating linkbait and promoting it to social media news and bookmarking sites can attract a slew of links from bloggers that read them, as long as you don't go too far and get outed as engaging in social media spam.
• Driving traffic for ad revenue models - By creating quality content, you can be rewarded by gathering a large base of followers. These followers can serve as an effective distribution channel for such content, which then drives traffic to ad supported blogs hosting it.

By getting past some of the more stereotypical perceptions of social media being a time-wasting addiction for a younger generation, business executives can start to understand more about the value of social media in further business objectives.