Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Companies Are Not Ready, Willing And Able For Marketing 2.0


From student Margot. This topic will resonate with many companies trying to determine how, where, when and why to dive into Social Media. Great article from Six Pixels of Separation on changing perspective:

November 26, 2008 11:44 AM

Posted by Mitch Joel

Most companies looking at Social Media and Web 2.0 see it as a media channel to broadcast their messages into. This includes most Governments and Associations. This is the wrong reason to do it and the wrong strategy.

If your company is looking at engaging in the social channels, but simply wants to tell the gathered audience about their brands, messages, products and services, here's the one best piece of advice to make that happen: advertise on those channels.

You can do either mass advertising or you can target ads specifically to the types of people who might be more inclined to act on your messages. Companies like Facebook and Google"let's post our videos on YouTube," or "everyone's on Twitter, we should be on Twitter too," and what comes after is a closed, one-way broadcasting channel that does not engender the shared values of these social systems, including: commenting, being open to differing opinions, responding and - most importantly - making changes based on the feedback and conversation that is taking place. offer these types of targeting. The common attitude is,

This is the primary reason why most companies have epic fails on these channels: they're broadcasting not engaging, responding and adapting.

Don't ask for people's opinions or be in channels where that back and forth takes place and not do anything about it. It's insulting and it's a huge waste of both your time and the people who have connected to you.

A lot of companies talk about "opening up" or "letting the information free" but what it boils down to is a couple of inches more liberal than their traditional marketing and communications. Have you seen some of the topics of conversation listed at recent Government, Association, Marketing and Public Relations seminars? They hint at how open the topic will be, but the subtle undertones of the conference description and the speakers asked to present stink of, "how can your company understand what people are saying and how your company can control the chaos and broadcast into it." more here

1 comment:

Ethan Bauley said...

Dig this:

"Social" media is a misnomer. It's really "personal" media.

Might this change how marketing geezers approach these communities?

As Linda Richman might say, "Discuss amongst yourselves"

;-)