Social media is the hottest trend on the internet right now. More and more people get connected via social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter and share things via YouTube, Delicious or SlideShare. Facebook with currently more than 200 million user is the website with the most visits per month in December 2009 (2,8 billion) leaving former unrivaled champions like Google and Yahoo! behind.
Million visits per month (Source http://siteanalytics.compete.com)
How does Corporate Communication react?
As the social media trend emerged, coporates started positioning themselves to seek communicational benefits. Imminent and easy to unvail are positive effects for the corporate image. Social media is young and trendy to be part of it refreshes your brand and thus offers marketing value. More difficult to find are direct effects on business. Dell tells us that they make millions selling on Twitter. But Facebook or Twitter themself still lack answers on how they plan to turn their leading role within Social Media into tangible assets! Some say webculture have been soured by the “everything for free” attitude. Google successfully captured the advertising market to pay their bill but will this cake be big enough to also feed Social Media on the long-run.
The answer for this will be given by corporate communication strategies. Currently there is a shift of marketing budgets towards web. But what is the true value of a banner displayed 100 million times on Facebook? To me a banner looks like an old advertising strategy brought online. It is a relict of broadcasting brought to the Web 2.0 environment. As a principle, I never click on ads, how about you?
To benefit from a trend you need to understand the way it works first.
Social Media to me is about conversation and engagement. People want to share authentic feelings, thoughts and information. If corporates want to be part of this they need to comply with it. Currently lots of companies use Facebook and Twitter as push communciation channel pretty much like press releases. They just follow where their users are. But they still use the same communication attitude and don’t get into any conversation. Web 2.0 offers a multi-way communication. Corporates not answering user questions are just missing the point! On the long run I think the damage to the brand outridges benefits from the simple present on Web 2.0.
What does this mean for corporate communication strategy?
Corporates should be very careful before engaging themselves within Social Media. They should look into a long-term communciation strategy first. Decide which plattform should be used for what reason and plan appropriate ressources to engage into true conversations. In nowadays global village only true committed companies will benefit from spreading their message word-to-mouth, worldwide!
Summing-up I would advise two steps to be considered:
First get acquainted with the new patterns by listening to your audience. Listening is always the best if you like to learn. Take your time and evaluate all your options. Its ok if you decide not to use Social Media!
Only if you see value for your company, take the second step and engage yourself into a true conversation.
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