What is The Value of Social Media to Marketers Today And How Can They Leverage It?

Social media is not just a strategy, it’s a platform. And depending on the marketer and the time and the particular program, it can be a core part of the strategy, or it can just be an amplification. If you take something like the Superbowl or the Olympics, social is not the core of the strategy, but it’s an amplification vehicle where you – brands can find ways to intersect and engage consumers where they're talking with each other. And that’s a really valuable place to be. Other times, the social media is the core of the strategy. A great example is Vitamin Water, the drink, did a flavor creator. Where effectively, they had a product launch that was gonna be crowd sourced based on what the fans thought was the best flavor. And they voted up. And so social media was not the endgame, it was the platform. And they prompted this in traditional media and other means. So social media became a place where consumers were able to actually interact. But it was promoted in the whole marketing mix. All the way to the point of sale. A marketer’s nightmare is to go to Google, page one, and see something negative about their brand. What we tell our clients is the best defense is a good offense. And so positive conversations fueling those and amplifying them by providing positive programs for consumers to interact, some value exchange, is the best way to offset negative conversation. About four years ago, Dell had some laptops that were exploding. And when you did a Google search result, the top searches under the term “Dell Laptops” were exploding laptops. Blogs, videos, things that were incredibly damaging to the brand. And this not only hurt their search results and the brand perception, it’s hurt their brand equity value. So the best way, and they actually have overcome that, through a proactive social media strategy. So you can't eliminate bad conversation. What you can do is try and have a blend and amplify your positive conversations as much as possible. Social media is about authenticity and building up trustworthiness between the brand and the consumer. And admitting fallibility is one of the best ways to do that. Opening up yourself to conversation, to criticism, if done the right way, can be a great trust building exercise. And at the end of the day, trust is one of the major differentiators a brand will have versus another brand.