Lesson #2 - New Is Better Than Old

Welcome to the 21^st century, where we have information at our finger tips and we request our news updates come every second rather than three times a day. We are officially a world of on-demand and instantaneous consumers and there is no turning back now. If companies and brands want to keep up with the changing (already changed) times, they need to jump onto the bandwagon…and quick! It’s time (in most cases, past time) to start changing the way our marketing departments are created, maintained, and utilized. We must now look at ways to make our content available to the consumer at all hours of the day, and be ready to react to those consumers’ requests and comments (at all hours of the day). This will take more than staffing our marketing departments with 9am-5pm employees; we need to have a staff dedicated to monitoring and researching our audiences and ready to fire back with a response in a matter of minutes. In this new era of technology and business, letting a post or comment sit untouched for too long can have a negative effect on your brand. At the same time, know when to stop talking or when to stay silent all together. The “old” conventional approach to marketing just doesn't have what it takes to carry your brand to success in this new social media driven world.

While employee and content availability is crucial to success for your brand on social media, so is the language and composition of that content. The content your company or brand shares with its audience needs to be relevant and personal, allowing for human connections to grow and develop. These are much different approaches from the previous safe and formal route marketing campaigns were driven down. With content being available at any moment and never truly going away, it’s no longer a campaign marketers should really be focused on, it’s now solid and engaging content that takes precedence over a simple marketing campaign. Concentrating on forming bonds and relationships with your audience, through genuine and direct contact is what gets your followers excited about your brand and willing to share their excitement with others. In this day and age, word of mouth has morphed into an online sharing phenomenon. For every online conversation, there are nine offline conversations about that same piece of content. Social media has become a spring board for sharing content and a place to get consumers talking about your product!

I for one am clearly a fan of the new way of thinking in terms of marketing and social media. While there is still a place for old school marketing methods, like print ads and television commercials, it’s pretty clear that those methods on their own are no longer enough. If you’re not ready to take the leap into the new way of thinking completely, try adding in a dash of new school methods here and there along with your traditional approaches…after all, it is important to walk before you run!

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