I am a CEO

Conventional marketing has been around  for donkeys years  , as early as  the Gutenberg’s metal movable type in the 1450s  , there were marketers ready to disseminate information,  yes the science behind it was  not perfected, it was more of trial and error.  But then came technology first in the form of  magazines, then newspaper and then the radio and  Television.  Mass media ruled the masses rather the corporate masses.  They were just the perfect route to eyeballs. Then came the computers and the Internet.  New tools , high uptake and  global reach.  Corporates were out there in the cyberspace, making there presence  felt, trying to increase traffic onto their sites.  Trying to grab attention of all that would listen ( at-least their target markets)

But there was  one thing in common to all of the above media , and that was that the marketer talked and the  consumer (audience) listened.  And  so for ages corporates talked  , they were a  part of this one sided conversation . They talked and initially it was  interesting listening to them, it was novel for some time,  creativity  and maybe not that  much of relevance and of-course repetition defined the uptake of the message. We as consumers were hammered with, what to buy when to buy , where to buy it from,  why we needed  something, and we listened , we bought and felt happy. But then things  changed  , there were quite a few fraudulent  claims of utility , of price of quality . And at the same time along came the choice of not listening , the ability to ignore or forward the disruptive corporate messages in the form of TIVO ;s , the spatial continuum was altered, this was specially in relation to television, the thirty second spots were loosing their effectiveness.  At the same time this new wave crossed the world, the wave of getting connected, of talking to each other  , of uniting to  make a difference.  A fight for what they loved and what they loathed, and at  such a time though i cant say that conventional media faded away , however i would say the social wave gained importance.

Any corporate now who at-least is not tuned into the social media space is surely moving towards extinction.   People have found a voice and they are having conversations,  they are connected with other people as well as with brands. They are talking about their day to day lives  , about the products they use, about the products they are satisfied  with , about what they hate. And its time to listen .

they said that the  information age was upone us long tim back , but truly i  think its only now that we are ready for it.

Why

1) look around you , and you will see  people on mobile phones, computers and accessing the web almost every waking minute of their lives.  interacting with some or the other social media platform.  Now its easy to be connected 24 / 7 look at the Iphones  , the blackberry’s and the  i pads.  And this is just the beginning.

2) The social media space is exploding Infact according to recent report  (Nielsen, Global Faces & Networked Places, 2009) 2/3rds of the worlds global population is in the social media space ,  visiting social sites is the 4th most popular online activity ahead of emailing and lastly believe this the social sites usage is growing three time faster than the overall internet usage,

3) Its not just one social media platform that skews these numbers .  facebook if it were a country would be the fourth most populated  in terms of sheer numbers, 13hours of video that is uploaded per minute on you tube  from across the globe,  13000000 the number  of articles available on Wikipedia. 1382% the  increase in twitter usage from jan to feb 2009 .

Now  should we  take social media seriously.   Well now that  ihae gotten your attention , lets lok at how we could use this abundant resource.

Marketers have always been creative and here are a few usages that i have come across

1) for Market research – segmentation , likes dislikes etc etc

2) Beta testing of products

3) Customer service, Complaint management  and CRM  initiatves

4) Branding , branding and some more Branding

5) Customer feedback and Product innovation

6) Generating  Loyalty – the tribe

7) Sales promotions

8) Competitor intelligence gathering

(happy if you could add a  few more usages  here )

I think the Social media space is in actuality appropriate for almost all of the marketing functions , and its useful in almost throughout the product life cycle.  I agree that its not appropriate for all brands as a purely promotional or advertising tool, however none the less its important for the company to atleast observe whats happening in the social media space  in context to their brand and products.  It  keeps a company’s ear to the ground ,  and thus makes it better prepared to respond.

So whatever you do buy your damn senior executives an I pad and tell them to go play . See you there.

Tags: marketers, Marketing, social media, social media for dummies, targeted marketing