While the idea of Social Media has become a fairly mainstream concept in the startup, internet and technology realm, it seems as though it is finally making an entrance in other industries. In other words, the value of leveraging various online tools such as social networking, social bookmarking, blogging, and etc. are receiving the acknowledgment they deserve for the tremendous amount of influence it can potentially spawn.
The following video below demonstrates and explains how Social Media plays an integral role in marketing and driving business.
An important lesson to note about Social Media is keeping in mind and paying attention to how it is utilized to enhance marketing within the business scope. Many times, I’ve noticed that people place too much effort and weight on tactics. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not undermining the value of any tactical execution because it’s arguably a necessary component of any successful marketing attempt, but there’s more to maximizing Social Media tools than just posting a video onto YouTube, creating an email campaign, writing a few blog entries and submitting a couple of articles to Digg. It’s vital to be aware that each Social Media tool has its own unique personality, environment and sense of community. What this means is that as a modern day marketer, you need to understand the culture of each Social Media micro-world to see how involvement with it will ultimately affect your business marketing goals. You want to know why partaking in some type of Social Media will move you closer to your goal, so that you have the knowledge to do other things to help achieve the aim.
I view Social Media as if it were a watch. It has many moving parts, with gears of different shapes and sizes but each that have their own purpose to tell time. Some gears work more than others, but if one gear breaks, big or small, the entire time-telling breaks as well. In Social Media management, you’re going to find that some tools have a greater value to your operation (which is a-OK) and the beauty of this is to find a balance in all of it. The objective is to effectively listen to and monitor your target audience and cater to what they want and looking for. You need to formulate a Social Media campaign that makes sense to your audience and the people you want to reach out too. Translation: Each Social Media campaign will be unique for every company.
I can’t tell you which Social Media tools are great and worthy, because frankly they’re all good in their own right (and new ones are sprouting daily). But I will share with you that an effective Social Media campaign will be one that fosters a pleasant user experience that provides all the stuff (information, links, videos, online gadgets, advice, podcasts, blogs, people and etc) that they’re looking for and might be interested in all readily and easily available.
Social Media management isn’t about managing your audience, but managing the tools to fit what your audience needs and wants.
Now that we live in a highly sophisticated world of saavy internet users, it’s faux pas for companies and organizations to not incorporate modern marketing strategies along with their traditional marketing methods.
Getting larger companies to really adopt social media is easier said than done. I have listened to a number of Fortune 500 companies talk about social media and they seem to have the “Wait and See” attitude. I think that while it certainly makes sense for them to adopt new methods they want proof that it works before abandoning alternative marketing methods.
I’m in agreement with the response above. However, on the smaller level, my publisher has seen good results with blogs and you tube. I enjoy the blogosphere and connecting with my readers but on a greater scale, I don’t know if this would be possible. http://www.bentpage.wordpress.com. Still, very informative and interesting post. Thanks.
Every company, large or small will probably have a bit of skepticism when introduced to the idea of “Social Media.” This is where it’s necessary to educate them about how marketing is transitioning into a more interactive direction. I don’t think traditional marketing methods need or should be abandoned, but instead supplemented with modern approaches. As we all know, the field of marketing evolves and will always continue too. Keep up or be left behind.
In the context of the video posted here, I can see this as one more manifestation of “Long Tail”.
In Scoopville, tools of mass production created multiple niches thus creating a long tail. In the mean time they also pushed the head further down, thus increasing the sales of Big Icecream.
Monica, you have an interesting blog out here 🙂