Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Social Media For Skeptics
As a marketing consultant in the financial services space, an industry that has historically lagged behind others in adopting newer approaches to marketing, I encounter some skepticism about the viability of social media as a marketing/engagement strategy. I find a lot of this is due to the media hype around social media. If the media frenzy around social media is to be believed, social media is something that was invented in 2006 by the introduction of Twitter. The reality of course is that social media has always existed online. From the very early days of Usenet groups, geocities, and discussion forums, social media has been there. Certainly the user-interfaces are better, the technology is better, and the speed of interaction has increased (especially with sites like twitter) but fundamentally we’re looking at the same type of interactions that have existed for years.
I know that in my industry at least, no company would dismiss the importance and value of discussion forums. The same is increasingly true for blogs. If these once-perceived ‘faddish’ technologies are now accepted as legitimate, why not Twitter and Facebook? If companies are buying ad space on industry forums and blogs, why not allocate funds to develop a social media presence?
Also, if Twitter etc do end up fading away to be replaced by something bigger and better, so what? They are popular now, they are being leveraged now, customers are looking to interact with the brands they deal with there now. That’s what matters.
On the flip side, there’s a lot of opportunity for up and coming companies to gain a significant edge over some more established players by adopting social media tools. Seeing these less risk-averse start-ups snatching market-share might be the most convincing argument for the importance of social media.
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