Welcome to the 21st 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!
No comments:
Post a Comment