Challenges to Social Media Understated
by Feng ~ January 24th, 2011. Filed under: 80/20 rule, Social Media, Technographics.
Indeed, Social Media is an attractive platform to bring a brand’s marketing communication to the next level. To name a few, social media increases reach to a global audience and enables the company to generate instantaneous responses. It’s not difficult to name companies that have succeeded in incorporating social media into their game plan. But the challenges we know may well be way understated.
We all probably understand that on the Internet, anything that could possibly be said, be it the good, the bad, or the ugly, will be said. But wouldn’t the bad and the ugly have a more deleterious impact than the good have a positive impact on the company’s reputation? In general, people take good things for granted. But on the contrary, they condemn bad things more intensively. Similarly, discussions that centre around something that people didn’t like about the company may turn out to be much more heated and damaging, sometimes even having the company take action, as seen in the case of GAP reverting back to its old logo after public outcry.
I’ve also read about the 80/20 Rule on Larry Brauner’s blog. It’s interesting how it can be applied to social networking as well. To list a few he mentioned,
80% of all blogging is done by 20% of all bloggers
80% of all blog comments are made by 20% of all blog readers
80% of all online social networking is done by 20% of all online networkers
I shall assume using the 80/20 rule that 80% of social media contents (comments) are made my 20% of customers. But even if this is largely true, marketers could not focus only on this 20% of its customers. Using Technographics, if everyone is somewhere within the ladder, the impact of social media really is vast.
Creators blog content, critics repost them and comment, collectors link these content when they organize them for themselves, joiners discuss them on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, Spectators among with all the aforementioned consume them, viral spreads them to inactives. I guess the impact of social networks resonates much further than what I had imagined.