Tag » Facebook
It wasn’t too long ago when marketing was about talking to customers, and corporations got their message across through repetition, repetition, repetition. But over the last couple years, the rise of Web 2.0 tools and social media has fundamentally changed the relationship between corporations and their customers. Consumers are now also producers, writing blogs and creating user-generated videos; they connect with each other through social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. And now, they want to connect with companies too.
Cision and Don Bates of George Washington University conducted an online survey of Print and Web journalists from September 1, 2009, to October 13, 2009, to measure use of, and attitudes toward, social media for researching and reporting stories. Social media is defined as blogs, social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, microblogging sites such as Twitter, photo/video sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr, and review sites or web discussion forums such as eopinions.com. Results are based on 371 responses.
Social media marketing (SMM) gets a lot of press these days – and companies are feeling pressure to jump on the band- wagon. But if you’re like many marketers, you may be unclear about the benefits of SMM and how, exactly, you should use it to your best advantage. Without a clear strategy and specific goals and objectives, SMM can be a low-ROI time sink and it may undermine your other marketing efforts – even email. While email marketing and SMM can be a dynamic duo, you need to ensure these two powerhouse marketing tactics are working together in order to achieve results that are greater than the sum of their parts.
Companies have often played catch-up in understanding how to harness new technologies without over-managing them. In the early years of the World Wide Web, in the mid- to-late 1990s, many organizations feared that employees would spend too much time idly surfing the Web, so they tried to control access. While some employees undoubtedly did waste time that way, many soon figured out how to unlock the power of the Internet to do their jobs better, and the Internet quickly became a tremendously valuable resource for conducting desktop research, tracking competitors and other corporate activities.
In the last 18 months, the social media phenomenon has delighted, confounded and concerned marketers and advertisers all around the globe. They have had to learn quickly that the different ways consumers access the internet across multiple time zones, networks and devices is forcing them to change the way they do business.
EACH YEAR BRINGS A NEW SET OF CHALLENGES TO LEADERS. Yet, one challenge that not only endures but also grows in importance is managing and protecting company reputation. Raising this challenge even further on the leadership agenda is the evolving online community. Here, the sound of splintered stakeholders, intensifying media scrutiny, escalating scandals, globalization, and demands for stronger economic governance and corporate responsibility has reached deafening proportions.