Social Media Strategy for Businesses
Marketing through Social Media is becoming a hotter topic by the day. Our experience is that corporations have been caught by surprise and there is a collective head-scratching session going on.
The problem is that most corporations are a part of the ‘social networking’ scene whether they know it or not because people will be passing judgment, deifying or damning them all over the web anyway. Any marketing minded company is going to want to do something about that. But traditional marketing intervention is not easy. Social networks don’t follow a traditional media model and culturally they are massively different.
Traditional marketing methodology will look to techniques like comment spam or PR distribution through blogs. Some blogs are even afforded the honour of publication status with the blog owner receiving free product bribery. But these are short-term strategies and any victories remain pyrrhic, leading to bad coverage and eventually a block off at server level for spamming.
Organisations need to adjust their approach. To ‘use’ the medium as one might use a magazine is a mistake. PR is usually a one-to-many communication, as is advertising, as is a website. The social dynamic is a many-to-many proposition where everyone talks back and publishes. And these views get seen because the interlinking of blogs and other social sites as well as the ever-refreshed content elevates them to the top of search lists. Somewhere in this mix, there are lots of things that companies want, but they are not generally available as ‘we speak, you listen’ options.
In the meantime, blogs and WordPress websites are influencing purchasers by the million. Corporations are confused. In fact Realitus exist to bridge the knowledge and experience gap.
The trick is in how to engage with the medium in a meaningful way. If a company has something to say about their market place and things up and down stream from there, then they are as welcome as anyone else in blogland. In fact it gives the blogger a lot of credibility to be recognised.
There are SEO pay-offs through trackbacks and links and the opportunity to be directly referenced as honest brokers. But it has to work both ways. Corporations cannot ‘use’ the medium as they might use a magazine. They can engage with the medium, which is a many-to-many proposition, but not control it, purchase space in it or make demands of it For some organisations that is a cultural step too far.
