After a conversation with one of my best clients yesterday, I was shocked to hear that some businesses and corporations still seem to think that social media is just a passing fad. Social Media is in fact taking the world by storm and proof of this is that some of the biggest corporations are not only taking it on they are excelling at it! Look at big brands like Coca Cola, Burger King, Ford, Dell and of course the meteoric success of Starbucks all using social media well.

There are of course some brands who are missing the mark big time and the reasons for this are many, with the main reason being that they are using an old mindset to use new tools.

Old mindsets that miss the mark are:

• Social Media is just a passing trend: not with the numbers on social media steadily rising every day and more social media sites popping up weekly.
• Social media is too time consuming: a social media strategy needs only to set  one or two times a day to be on social media and choosing the right sites on which to put your profiles is a part of the strategy.
• Social Media is viewed as just another advertising channel: social media is anything but this, in fact we must look at it in an entirely new light. Social Media for corporations needs to be put in its own more autonomous category altogether as part of a larger marketing strategy.
• They think that it isn’t worth setting up a central strategy: Social Media is about having a global strategy and global audience, but this must be both created and monitored by the international head office of the corporation.
• They aren’t trying to build communities: using your social media profiles as just another place to advertise, sending out link after link or sales pitch after sales pitch with no conversation is not what social media is about at all.
• They don’t see the long term view: social media is exponetial and can grow very quickly, BUT it can take little while to generate the trust and respect needed to allow fans to connect with a big brand and this takes time!
• They can’t track it properly so they don’t trust it: the metrics are there, but as old mindset marketers everywhere bewail – none of it is entirely definitive – this is people and trend driven and unless big brands are keeping up they will go down.

What Corporations who miss the mark are missing:

Social Media is SOCIAL: it’s about building relationships based on trust and respect for the person handling the profiles, this means one very important thing – you MUST have trust and respect for the person you have handling those profiles. Do they post in ways that authentically represent the brand? Do they have the integrity and sense of enthusiasm necessary to show passion for the brand? Are they incentivise to create a worldwide audience? Starbucks could not have done what they did with social media if they hadn’t had someone handling their social media who filled this criteria, who is handling your social media strategy?

If this was farmed out to young Sally because she understands Facebook and Twitter, you may want to rethink this. Social Media is a profession and it needs a professional to handle branding and dissemination of your marketing messages and brand awareness, if this is not possible it needs to be someone who is passionate about the brand and has the best interests of it at heart. Social media is fast becoming the ‘voice’ of the world, you not only need to know what they’re saying about you, you need to be listening and responding. Because it is the ‘voice of the world’ who is going to be deciding if your corporation makes it or not, yes social media is just that powerful. If you doubt this just take a look at what is happening with BP right now, or what happened with Nestle, Pampers and of course the makers of Mortrin.

Social Media Requires Transparancy: now this is a big one for many large corporations, the idea that the marketing message is going to be in the hands of ‘the people’, and worse that they may recieve negative comments on their social media profiles where everyone can see them. Here’s a hard fact – both of these things are happening anyway and with no listening ear or social media presence what can you do about it? Nothing! The lessons from Domino’s and other brand who were caught out on social media are profound, when you can hear and converse with your market, when you are in a relationship with them you can create enormous good will and word of mouth by admitting you were wrong and finding a way to settle any disagreements with style and flair!

Not only this, but this kind of transparency also helps to create brand advocates and even evangelists who see your brand as trustworthy, just because your brand was there on the spot admitting you were wrong and settling the dispute online right in front of the world. You can gain such amazing charisma from these small acts of kindness, proving that your brand is still listening to the little guy. This is your opportunity to take the BIG out of BIg brand and bring a warm and fuzzy feeling to your customers that will translate into bottom line win/win for all.

Social Media Means Sharing: Yes, we’re back talking about ‘warm and fuzzy’ things again. Sharing means listening, communicating and collaboration with your customers, which also means you will be right at the coal face and able to ask your customers what they want from your brand. Talk about the simplest way to ‘test’ the market, think of the opportunities to raise your brands worldwide profile! Starbucks have this down pat, asking their audience to ‘design’ the next coffee or the Technorati asking their audience to help them design their new logo. This kind of sharing means trust is a two way street and this builds even more trust, this kind of mutual trust and admiration can only translate in higher profits.

Social Media is About Being Authentic: Now this comes back to a point I made earlier in this post about who you trust to handle your social media branded profiles. Because social media requires an authentic mindset from everyone and I mean everyone, corporations need to have someone who understand who your brand is, what the brands vision and mission is. What personality your brand has, because your brand needs to be HUMAN! People want to do business with people, social media is to blame for this as it makes every brand more accessable. This is key! Only humans can be authentic, corporations cannot, the human you have as your voice on social media needs to be authentic and authentically representing your brand.

Social Media Requires Consistency: There is no set and forget in social media, someone needs to be online daily or at least very regularly, in fact the bigger your corporation the more often you will need to be there. This will mean you must have a strategy, a team of people who know what they’re doing and scheduling, goals and outcomes in place. Social media is constantly changing and growing and you will need someone in charge who is on top of what’s happening and what’s trending and what to do next. Someone who understands that social media is all about trickle feeding your social media profiles consistently, answering questions and complaints daily, praising and rewarding your brand advocates and evangelists and coming up with innovative and creative ways to engage your online audience.

Social Media for Corporations needs to be set up by someone who understands your brand and how best to use the different social media platforms for maximum effect, which ones will work for you and how to create initial and continuous engagement for your corporation. Corporations need to start now, social media is not a trend that will die out, in fact it is a steadily growing trend that sees no end to its exponential growth, look at Facebook now topping 500 Million users by mid-July – the world has found its voice and it is has no intention of losing it again.

Get ready for a whole new world or get left behind.

http://statistics.allfacebook.com/pages
http://mashable.com/2008/12/24/free-brand-monitoring-tools/

© 2010, AnnieInfinite. All rights reserved.

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