A vote of confidence – the social media buzz
Many signs seem to be pointing me towards choosing social media as a topic for my tenth blog post.
1) I’m normally subscribed to the Youth In Philanthropy newsletter and yesterday I got an e-mail saying: “You may have noticed that you’re not receiving our newsletters anymore. We’ve recently proceeded to using Facebook and Twitter to connect. Add us here!”
2) Of course, the movie. The Social Network was premiered in October, but I still haven’t gotten around to watching it. It’d definitely be inspiring to see Facebook in its early days and the entrepreneurial perspective of it all.
3) The International Business Conference held at the Hyatt Regency last Friday. My second favourite session (first being BigBadBoo because Alu played cartoons for us…) was the panel on social media. The two panelists who caught my attention were Ryan Holmes, founder of hootsuite and Howard Olsen, founder of High Output Training Systems. Both agreed – social media is the new way to engage customers and consumers, even develop conversations with seeming strangers.
4) As with many of my other blog posts, my dear subscription of Maclean’s. This time, none other than the article titled “Facebook’s best friend”
In this post, I’m going to talk about the article in the context of one of the readings in class – Community Relations 2.0 .
What was most powerful about the Maclean’s article and I quote:
“The key, says Sandberg, is making commercial content and user content indistinguishable. If a user decides to “like” Gatorade, the vote of confidence is broadcast to their entire network of friends. That information, in turn, helps Gatorade better target its message by seeing what ads work and what users respond to. It all serves to increase users’ engagement with the site’s advertisers.”
And I agree. It brings the distance and unfamiliarity of information traveling through fiber optic networks to the same action as my friend recommending me to try a product. With the information overload of consumers nowadays, this is essential . I filter out advertising, but I won’t filter out what my friend is trying to tell me.
The end of the article mentions how some companies are reluctant to hop onto the bandwagon because of the unknown financial gain from social media activities. As Community Relations 2.0 suggests though, it may not be a choice whether companies engage or not because consumers are engaging online. Companies may have to get involved to act as First Responders in unwanted messages. So, why not use the tool and bring out positive messages instead? And capitalize on the interactivity for feedback!
I truly believe in the power of social media and I give it my vote of confidence.