There’s been an awakening in how effectively social media can be used to engage with consumers and stay connected with them after they’ve gone through the “awareness” phase through offline marketing that many businesses still spend massive parts of their budgets on. It seems almost everywhere I look, brands are connecting their online and offline efforts well really implementing the concept of “Social CRM”.

It’s understandable that you can’t reach everyone online and traditional advertising and marketing channels like television, newspapers, magazines, events and more are still going to be a part of the marketing mix especially in the Indian context where the web market is still growing but not all-inclusive. However, brands are realizing that the offline channels mentioned above are strong in creating awareness, but then a lot of the research, comparison, deliberation and final decisions are made after moving online and the two need to work seamlessly together to get results.

Moreover, offline marketing is still considerably more expensive and buys less attention time with consumers so how do you keep them in the loop after they’ve heard about you?

Send them online!

Scenario 1

The 2012 Delhi Auto Expo is a classic example of an offline marketing channel that brings over a 1000 automobile manufacturers and brands together. They showcase their cars, unveil new launches, measure customer reactions and interact. Needless to say, it doesn’t come cheap and not every consumer that brands connected with that day are going to make an instant decision and become customers at the location itself. However this year, you will notice many manufacturers and brands have prominently displayed their social media locations asking consumers that have visited their stalls to go ahead and connect with them on their Facebook page, join their online communities or follow them on Twitter.

This enables them to stay engaged with those consumers much after the event is over and the tents are packed away, remaining connected with them and potentially see more of them turn customers at a much later date.

Scenario 2

I passed by a large billboard for a new shopping mall that’s opened not too far away. Unlike some hoardings which try to cram as much of a message into space one gets a few seconds to look at most while driving by, this one had the mall and invited passers by to come find out more about what they had in store directing them to join their Facebook page. Almost literally what you could remember in those moments when you glance at something and drive by.

Awareness through the billboard and engagement via social media. A perfect combination.

This process of awareness -> capture -> engage -> convert while moving from offline to online media has been evolving rapidly. From having static website addresses displayed asking people to read more about the company or brand some time ago, we now have more Twitter handles, Facebook page addresses and social media locations printed across on shopping bags, signboards, television commercials, shouted on radio, splashed across billboards…

The key difference?

We’re no longer asking consumers to come read some information about the organization or brand on the website. We are now asking them to come engage with us in a two way dialog, talk to us and keep in touch!

…. and that is a whole new dynamic in the relationship between organizations and consumers!

A good social media or online web presence strategy has all the trappings of a successful lead nurturing process. Yet when it comes to making a marketing investment, there are still some that that would rather invest in the former than the later. This brings me to why I think this.

A discussion I had with a business owner around two separate topics : lead generation / nurturing automation and social media engagement got me thinking about how different responses to these two marketing tools can evoke especially with more traditional businesses that haven’t been completely sold on the importance of having a social web presence. While discussing lead nurturing and related campaigns, there was no hesitation in investing a significant budget in CRM software, marketing automation, acquiring leads from various sources and developing a nurturing system that would keep an ongoing engagement with customers till they are ready to buy, turn into customers or even repeat customers.

When the discussion turned to social media and developing a long term engagement with potential target customers online, there was a lot more hesitation in investing in an effort that would probably take a good deal of time to yield significant measurable results in terms of a wider online outreach and converting customers.

Note the key words in the intent of lead nurturing systems in any marketing process is :  keep an ongoing engagement with customers till they are ready to buy, turn into customers or even repeat customers

Isn’t that what a good social media and web presence does? When I check my work emails, I am cautious about sales emails and try not to fall victim to smart marketing tactics. Always on the guard so to speak. However, as an individual on the web, I’m always the target of someone’s brilliant web marketing strategy and the subject of someone’s lead nurturing system whether I know it or not! I’ll be the first to admit it.

Real Life Scenario #1

I follow Domino’s Pizza India on Facebook via their page along with 740,000 others. I see something from them almost every day on my Facebook wall whether it’s a picture of a group of friends having a pizza party, a new product announcement, a new funny advertisement video they’ve just released or even a promotion. Now I may not always click on their links and be the most active user when it comes to sharing their updates. However, they are constantly there on my Facebook news feed and last Friday when I had a terrible pizza craving and saw the Friday Freak Outs offer coupon on my wall, I dialed in and ordered. In fact, I added a nutty choco lava cake to the order, because that picture had been haunting me during the week and I just had to have one. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who had a pizza craving on Friday.

Domino’s India 1 – Neil 0 

Real Life Scenario #2

There’s a very talented graphic designer I connected with on Linked In about 2 years ago. We got into a discussion on one of the Linked In groups around marketing and after exchanging a few comments around the same topic, I added him to my network. He would actively share interesting posts around design trends along with general updates from time to time. Occasionally I would re share one of his posts but we never really connected much after the initial exchange on the Linked In discussion. That is until this month! A customer planning a new online publication with us needed a new logo developed. Who is the first person that comes to mind? Exactly! A requirement surfaced and he was there to contact and see if the requirement could be fulfilled.

Pro Graphic Designer 1 – Neil 0

Real Life Scenario #3

My wife and I were chatting with a bunch of friends on where we could go spend Christmas afternoon and not have to spend the days running up to the 25th cooking and baking. While checking my Twitter feed, I noticed a bunch of local Tweeple sharing pictures of the Christmas tree outside the Hyatt hotel in our city and talking about the Christmas brunch spread which promised to be nothing short of lavish. This lead us to the website to check up on the details and after some deliberation, a call to make a reservation.

 Hyatt Christmas Brunch Event 1 – Neil 0

Facebook walls, news feeds, Twitter and Linked In activity streams are nurturing platforms among other things. This is where people spend their time, exchange information, converse, communicate, research and make their decisions too. Only you can’t approach them with the typical sales mindset of bombarding people with emails and marketing messages. It needs a more human engagement and needs to be invested in for it to start working for you like any other marketing channel. That aside, there is no lead nurturing system quite as effective, non intrusive and capable as the social web. As someone looking to market their product, service or brand, a good social media presence can do exactly what a good lead nurturing program can …only better.

 keep an ongoing engagement with customers till they are ready to buy, turn into customers or even repeat customers

It’s time social media marketing is considered as serious a marketing investment worth making as any!

Overview

Volkswagen has been standing out in peoples mind when it comes to their innovative and often striking marketing campaigns both offline and online. Their marketing activity in India where they have grown very quickly into one of the most desired car brands has covered everything from The VW Polo Cup racing series to newspaper advertisements that had people drop their coffee and jump back. Remember when you opened the newspaper and it started talking about the VW Vento? From talking newspapers to some of the funniest viral videos, Volkswagen is one to watch when it comes to creative marketing ideas.

With the new launch of the 2011 Volkswagen Jetta, the VW brand has set the social media grapevine buzzing with another engaging and fun social media outreach campaign which has everyone on the social web talking about the new Jetta.

Challenge

The Indian car market has been very active with new launches with several manufacturers and and equal number of hot new launches taking place in the last three months with every model vying for attention both from the consumers and media. Car sales is a very aspirational space and the more people talk about a car, the more you want it! So just how did Volkswagen India get people online to talk to talk about the all new Jetta and capture attention?

Strategy – What Volkswagen Did

They launched the Anything4Jetta campaign and got people to talk about what they would be willing to do to get their hands on the all new VW Jetta! The online campaign is centered around a micro-site http://www.anything4jetta.com/ which is primarily Twitter centric…or in other words, you can login directly with your Twitter account.

Simplicity is key and the anything4jetta.com website gets straight to the point on the home page. As a visitor that would like a chance to win the new Jetta, all you have to do is Tweet what you would do for the new Jetta along with the hash tag #anything4jetta and your witty tweet may qualify you for a range of monthly prizes and eventually the grand prize of a brand new Jetta.

So that would get users thinking up smart tweets and tweeting but there is more. A clever point system explained here within the site would point out you get points for following @volkswagenindia, SMS tweets, voice tweets, uploading photos, uploading crazy videos of what you’re willing to do, retweets and other activity. THAT is what makes this a complete social media experience exploiting all channels to create buzz around the Jetta and the incentive… points (and the grand prize of possibly winning a car of course).

As a result Twitter is buzzing with chatter over the new Jetta, videos are being added, photos shared and ….they have out attention.

(The Anything4Jetta Online Campaign & Contest – Click Here To Visit)

(The Facebook Component – Click Here To Visit)

(The YouTube Component)

What’s Cool About This Campaign?

- It gets you to talk about the car by offering you a chance to win something you desire (the car) which instantly makes you an online ambassador for the product and has you saying good things about it

- It get’s users to do a lot of the creative work and come up with fun, catchy tweets that could draw further attention

- Very low entry barrier to get started with the campaign and competition. All you need is a Twitter account and add a hash tag to your tweet and you are in the running

- Great incentive system to drive more social activity like sharing videos, photos, voice recordings through the point system

- A smart system of having monthly prizes and a leader board to keep users involved and keep talking about the product till the winner of the grand prize is announced

- Doesn’t directly advertise the product since the campaign itself is fun and about coming up with crazy things you would do to win a Jetta. Yet the product is well placed everywhere, showcased on the anything4jetta.com site

- Integrates Facebook, Twitter well

To sum up, the Anything4Jetta campaign is just a very fun and engaging campaign which still gets people buzzing about the car. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

(The Facebook Page – Reaching Out To A Community)

Overview

For any guitar player, the Gibson Guitars brand needs no introduction whatsoever. Their guitars are legendary as is the brand with guitar players such as Slash, Joe Perry, Zakk Wylde and several other musicians endorsing the brand. Just about every guitar player and aspiring guitar player would want to own a Gibson if finances permit. Gibson as a brand has a global appeal on just about every continent but when they decided to formally launch their range of products in India more recently and connect to the growing music community there with an online web presence, they appear to have paid a lot of attention to adding a local flavor to their campaign and creating an identity in the local rock music circles across Indian cities.

Indian rock culture has been growing among the youth and both musicians and music lovers across the country are constantly tuned in to what is happening in the music circuit, where the next gigs are happening, what the most popular bands are up to. A very tight community that’s actively involved with staying in tune with the music scene via the web and…the perfect market for a brand like Gibson.

Challenge

For Gibson, the challenge would be to create awareness in a completely new market which has a more or less ‘underground’ or non-mainstream rock circuit consisting of a few hundred active bands and tens of thousands of fans that attend rock concerts, buy albums and tunes released by prominent local bands and form the larger group of buyers and influencers for the Gibson brand. Guitar purchases are highly influenced by guitar heroes that use and  endorse a particular brand of guitars. Gibson would need to help audiences in India identify bands and prominent guitar players (local guitar heroes) that use their guitars and make a connection with them.

Strategy – What Gibson Guitars Did

Local community & content driven website – www.gibsonguitar.in The website not only has a product listing and information about the line of products available now for the Indian market but prominently features the “News & Lifestyle” section as well as the “Community” section which is all about making a social media connection with the audience that matters for the brand.

(A Website Focused On Delivering Engaging Content To The Music Community)

The “News, Features & Events” section is virtually the blog component of the campaign with daily multiple articles, news posts, events, interviews with really well written pieces pertaining to the Indian rock music circuit. Covering practically all the interesting happenings, topics and news that musicians and music lovers would like to keep in touch with, the content does a great job of keeping fans updated and very intelligently features bands, interviews and artists that use Gibson guitars.

The “Community” section features a forum which is a great platform to drive the musician community to the site and get them talking about their products. What’s very commendable is the Facebook page and community which gets it’s feed of content and updates largely from the blog / news section of the website but really adds that ‘interactive’ and ‘two way conversation’ component with fans actively commenting on updates, sharing event updates, replying to articles and features. It’s interesting to note, this is not Gibson Guitars, creating a Facebook page where they talk only about their guitars. This is a Facebook page where Indian rock music enthusiasts get great updates to upcoming events, reviews of shows, albums, interviews and keep in touch with the Indian rock music scene. It’s branded by Gibson guitars.

Although the Gibsonguitar.in website has a YouTube component, it’s linked to the Gibson Guitars international YouTube channel and we would have liked to have seen a more local flavor with branded coverage videos of interviews, concert clips and more. However, what they do very well is sharing new music videos, concert clips and YouTube videos directly from other sources on their Facebook wall which means as a fan, you get to watch the latest on YouTube via their feed.

(Gibson Guitars India On Twitter – Always Interesting Tweets)

(YouTube Videos That Really Push The Product Well)

What’s cool about this campaign

- The strategy offers fans a music publication with quality articles and news on the music scene

- It doesn’t come across as a blatant attempt to market or sell although you can’t ignore the branding or knowing that you’re on the Gibson Guitars site or Facebook page

- The product is very well represented and it’s very clear the people interviewed or the bands reviewed and so on use Gibson Guitars. If they don’t, they are still included but more subtly than those who do represent their brand

- Great word of mouth / social sharing component built in since fans on Facebook love to talk about the guitars featured in the content, are happy to spread the word about them, share event updates and articles with their friends and become advocates for the brand

- The content rich main site fuels the engagement on Facebook and Twitter too providing regular updates and keeps followers interested

- Great use of contests, free guitar giveaways to build more followers, engage people and build more word-of-mouth reach integrating Facebook and Twitter

All in all…a great way to make a connection with those that will eventually become your brand advocates!

“If you don’t have an iPhone…then you don’t have an iPhone”

As a marketing enthusiast I love the message. It’s smart, it’s catchy and makes you question…why don’t I have an iPhone? As a television viewer, I can’t stand this line anymore because I’m compelled to watch it every five minutes over and over again while catching my favorite shows on TV. Today it’s the iPhone advertisement but a week from now it will be some other advertisement, message or brand that will fight for attention and eventually haunt me to the point I would actually have a negative attitude towards the brand.

Similarly in the social web space, there is such a thing as overdoing it…..only perhaps you will have to change shoes to perceive this fact.

Let me explain with a common example of a regular day on Facebook….

Put on your marketing shoes as someone who is promoting their brand online :-

- 10:30 am You discover a really great blog post related to your business or industry

- 10:32 am You post it as an update on your company’s Facebook page and share it with everyone within the group

- 10:38 am You share another find on Facebook using your company’s page

- 10:40 am You add a status update to your company page about a new product that will be on offer soon

- 10:50 am You upload some photos from yesterday’s event to the page’s photo album

Put on your regular everyday Facebook user shoes who’s logged in to connect with friends and family. Rewind to 10:30 am:-

- 10:30 am You log in to Facebook and look at your news feed. A friend of yours has a birthday today. There are some new photos your sister uploaded of their recent vacation.  So you wish your friend, check out the new photos.

- 10:32 am You go back to your feed and see this blog post shared by a company whose page you “liked”. So you check out the blog post, click the line button and maybe even leave a comment.

- 10: 38 am There is another share from this company in your feed less than 5 minutes after the first one. You ignore it.

-10:40 am Now there is a third item from the same company saying they have a new product.

-10:50 am There is another item in your feed from the same company with some photos but your feed page is starting to look like their company page and their posts are dominating all the space in your Facebook feed pushing your friends and family out.

-10:55 am This is getting annoying…so you blog their updates or leave the page.

There is something like too much! Perhaps not as a business, but definitely as a consumer or user of the social web. It’s the same annoying feeling you get when someone on Twitter posts every 20 seconds especially when they are just links and not personal messages. It’s the same for automated social accounts which keep posting like bots, when you get an automated comment on your blog every single day from the same company trying to promote their link but don’t really have anything real to say about your post. It’s the same when someone keeps posting the very same link to your Linked twice a day in group drowning out all the good discussions and shares.

From a business perspective it’s understandable why so many will insist more is better when it comes to frequency of posting, updating and getting their brand and message in front of people as often as they can through any site. We need a return on investment right?

Is overdoing it really going to give you that return? Or will it turn people away from your brand?

Consistency, frequency and being ever present in front of your consumers is undoubtedly important. So how much is too much?

Social media as an effective marketing channel has been around for a while now and at times it seems the word has been thrown around so much that some businesses fail to really understand what it means before deciding they want to “use social media” to “increase traffic”, “increase sales” and demand “ROI”.

Among the Indian business fraternity, this divide in understanding how social media is used to build a presence or a brand is seems ever so prevalent after speaking to several business development executives in charge of using the social web in their marketing mix. There some Indian businesses that have used social media “brilliantly” to carve themselves a niche on the web using innovative and authentic ways to engage an audience. They’ve been able to make a connection with their target audiences by giving them something new, something useful, using blogging as a medium to communicate effectively engage their community.

These are often the companies who have said:

- We’d like to try something fresh, we need to communicate to our audience in a way that’s not direct selling or pushing people to buy from us but rather letting them know we’re here in this space and we’d like to connect with others who are interested too

- Let’s plan this right, take the time and invest in building a strong relationship with people online via quality content and engagement

- Of course we need ROI but we’re in it for the long haul and we want our online audiences to “like us” so we won’t jeopardize our brand, reputation or values as a business by crossing (invisible) boundaries that exist in the social web world.

These are the kind of companies you will see:

- Blogging with  a personality and a genuine voice

- Developing content that audiences will find useful

- Using Twitter not just on auto pilot to advertise a single link or two from their website but share, have conversations and open a communication channel with others there. You’ll notice their followers may grow more gradually but they have relationships with these followers and a genuine following.

- Using Facebook to build communities while understanding that peoples privacy and online space also needs to be respected

Lesson : – Everybody Loves Elmo As Well As Businesses That Understand And Respect The Social Web Environment

Then there are companies who see the social web as another marketing channel not very different from a large telemarketing or email list which needs to be pounded, messaging needs to be pushed out in front of people as possible and the objective is use all means to drive sales fast! These are businesses (And sadly a large number of so called SEO / Web Marketing / Social Media / Content Generation firms) that end up not using…but abusing the social web and effectively pollute it with a lot of the unwanted or spam content that you and I see and ignore out there.

These businesses have said:

- We need rapid link building to our website… we don’t care how you do it but we need to see 4000 links every month. Use auto commenters, leave multiple comments on anyone else’s sites,   publish hundreds of posts with links to our sites….we don’t care what the posts say as long as they have our keywords.

- Our objective is to go from 0 visitors to 100,000 visitors in the first month. We don’t care who they are or how they come to our site….just make it happen.

- If we spend $X for the first 2 weeks, we would like to see $X into 10 in sales by the end of these two weeks otherwise it means social media doesn’t work.

- We’ll create a Facebook account and Twitter account, link them to an auto sharing tool that lifts feeds from rss and then get someone to add 500 random followers everyday so they follow our advertising links and we get clicks that convert

- If you have a few hundred followers on Facebook and Linkedin, lets direct message each one with a bulk message and measure the results

- Create 20 profiles on each social bookmarking and networking site to promote our website.

- Post 30 Facebook updates on the page daily so all that a follower sees in their feed is us….doesn’t matter if it’s useful for them or not.

- Have all our content and links to the site replicated on all social sites like Squidoo, Article marketing tools, article distribution sites, Blogger and every other site.

- Join forums and we’ll post several great reviews of our own business under fake names

It’s these businesses and companies that claim these are genuine social media marketing tactics that are responsible for automated junk comments, tonnes of irrelevant articles and posts, spam email campaigns, spam messages in your Facebook, Linkedin and social accounts, shares that annoy you in your content sharing accounts, un related ping backs and links to your blog and sites, spam discussions in your forums or discussion groups and all that’s polluting the otherwise awesome social web environment.

It’s possible that with the sheer number of people these campaigns are pushed at that it could result in some short term benefits. However, do you really develop a positive vibe about a business that does this to you and ruins your social web experience? Would you really want to buy from or connect with them?

Nobody Likes Darth Vader Or Businesses That Pollute And Disrespect The Social Web For Profit

There’s a fine line between using and abusing social media. Each business needs to respect that the social web world exists on it’s own terms and to fit in, you need to be a part of that experience and contribute something constructive to peoples experience while respecting that they get to choose whether they want to engage with you or not. One needs to understand how to build a presence there gradually developing your influence and not try and get there with brute force like the offline marketing and advertising world.

The social web is not kind to those who use “corporate might” and “hard selling”. Take the time to understand what people want, what they don’t mind, how they interact in this online environment and  you’ll make a place for yourself there that will be yours for a long time to come.

As our crowdfunding quest continues, this week gets exciting as BuzzFactory is the featured startup on the May 2011 issue of GrowVC’s newsletter. For those of you who may have missed our last update, we’re on a mission to raise an early round of funding and here are the details:  BuzzFactory Goes Crowdfunding & Searches Out The Right Investors

The GrowVC community has a terrific network of investors and fellow entrepreneurs and we’re hopeful we’ll find some great people to connect with from within the community. The crowdfunding journey moves onward!

View our startup profile here : https://www.growvc.com/startups/36060

We’re ready to kick it into the next gear

However, like all good things that take time, we’re finally ready to launch into business mode taking what we’ve learnt from the toddler years and creating a platform from which growth is the only way forward. Not to say, we plan to sell out, change direction or put on suits and change who we are as a team but we’re committed to growing what we’ve started and looking to raise a first small round of early stage angel funding. It’s time to take things to the next level and the search is on for the “right investors” to get on board on our new journey there.

It’s not about finding an investor for us. It’s about finding the RIGHT investing partners

Have you ever watched a reality show when a rock band auditions hundreds of potential new drummers or lead singers to find that certain “vibe” or “missing piece of the puzzle” ? It’s more than just finding someone who can play or sing. It’s about the chemistry, a shared vision, a sense of mutual understanding and finding the RIGHT fit to achieve what we set out to do together. Similarly, it’s not just about who has a surplus of funds to invest for us. This is a search for the RIGHT angel investor…reality show style!  So what did we do? We’ve thrown our funding request open to the crowd…

Any Angel Investors in the crowd that believe content & interaction fuels the Social Web?

There’s a perfect match for everyone out there. As die hard romantics….we believe that’s this applies to startups and investors too. Magic happens when the right startups find the right investors and things click into place. So how did we decide to go speed dating and find our perfect match? Crowdfunding! As our association with the GrowVC crowdfunding platform stands and the network it’s grown, we thought it to be fitting and setup the BuzzFactory startup profile on GrowVC and opened our funding requirement proposal to there crowd!

We Invite you to check out our Startup Page, support our crowdfunding campaign and help us find the missing piece

https://www.growvc.com/startups/36060

This is where we are on GrowVC.com

You can sign up for a free login, comment, vote for us and help us gather momentum

http://www.facebook.com/pages/BuzzFactorynet-The-Social-Media-Content-Marketing-Guys/302089203410

This is where you can find us on Facebook, follow our crowdfunding campaign and journey as a startup

The search begins….

My inbox today had a rather interesting read. I received an email from the other side of the world from someone who was looking for permission to use a photo I had shared on Flickr but couldn’t connect there since I’ve been inactive there for a while. She wrote:

I sent you a Flickr e-mail but when I noticed that you hadn’t uploaded in 2 years I figured that maybe you were no longer checking mail there. So I took the plunge to google you, you certainly are not hard to find and that is a credit to your business!

I’m no Justin Bieber by a long shot but it’s heartening to know that what we do with social media and business blogging makes it easier for others to find us and connect with us. This email could well have been a potential customer who heard about what we do through “content” that they came in contact with and then did a search to see if they could connect with us. As a business that wants to be present on the social web the question you should be asking is:

How easy or hard would it be for someone to find you and connect with you if they decided they want to connect with you and did a Google search?

a) Impossible

b) Not to0 hard with some searching

c) Easy, we come up all over in related searches

This is where the reference to the social media phenomenon Justin Bieber comes in. Now don’t get wrong. For the record I would like to say I don’t get the “Bieber fever” …in fact I’m not a fan of Justin Bieber. I have been lucky enough not to have listened to any of his songs or watch any of his performances all the way through and intend to keep it that way. To go a step further his hair bothers me as much as Donald Trump’s does and if I had a razor and had my way I would probably get a restraining order from both their respective lawyers.

However, Justin is a social media wonder. If somehow you don’t know who he is, look up the name on Google and there is no other Justin or Bieber online that dominates the web results like this web phenomenon turned super star. Millions of youtube plays for his videos and a twitter following of over 8 million! Finding Justin Bieber on the web is not a challenge. He is EVERYWHERE!

This is one of the main perks of having an active social media, business blogging and content marketing strategy in constant motion. If you’re publishing and promoting content consistently and daily, you’re growing your web footprint. The more you grow this web footprint, the easier it becomes for those who need to connect with you …find you! Now this may not be on the Justin Bieber scale of things but every action that contributes to reaching out and indexing more engaging content online, makes the process of finding you, your business and website more visible on search engines.

So unless you’re looking to stay anonymous, get the wheels of your business blogging efforts turning and ….get found!

If you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen! In fact, don’t walk into the kitchen in the first place.

If you’re pulling out the stops and taking the leap into social media …be aware that you are opening pandora’s box and you need to be prepared to take on anything that comes out of there!

This is what any experienced online community or social media manager would tell you based on their experience if you’re still watching by the sidelines and wondering whether to engage with your market via social media channels or opt for the safer traditional one-way marketing communications medium where “control” is possible. Taking the social media leap involves being ready to jump into a new world where people don’t give a hoot about the traditional rules of engagement that many business have shielded themselves with. Expecting old school PR and marketing communications methods to be applied to your social media interactions will get you nowhere soon. You see that form of PR and marketing communications had the following attributes:

• Every message that went out to the public was carefully crafted and engineered to strike a certain nerve or reaction.
• The image of the business is always portrayed in good light. Messages always portray how good things are, how well the organization is doing, how nothing is our fault, how there is always only good news etc
• Negative feedback, events, bad news, weaknesses should be hidden from the public eye and anyone catching sight of such aspects would see vulnerability.
• Messages need to be diplomatic so that they don’t come across too direct. There are a list of things which simply can not be said.
• Whatever goes out on behalf of the organization needs to be analyzed, edited, re checked, re-edited, follow a long drafting cycle and then be released for everyone outside.

Social media may be a new medium of PR and marketing communications but it works on a different set of rules contrary to the old ones:

• It’s anything but a one-way communication channel. It’s always a conversation so if you put something out there expect honest and free feedback, comments, love and hate in equal amounts. Be prepared for replies because they will follow anything you say via the free web.
• It’s not about crafty messages that took months to draft. On the social web, the audience appreciate honesty, human interactions, transparency, openness and all those other things that were taboo with traditional business communications. If you can’t openly express the good, the bad and the ugly and feel the need to filter and suppress every message that goes out from those within the organization, then social media is not a good option for you.
• Be spontaneous and be yourself. Web audiences are not fond of ‘official statements’ from the organization nor do they connect with those messages your specialists took 3 months to release. They connect with the business via people within your organization who can express themselves freely and seem accessible and human online whether it’s on the blog, Facebook page, Linkedin, Twitter or anywhere else.
• People rule the web. Give them the benefit of the doubt and let them decide what they think about what you’re trying to express as a brand or organization. There will be those who appreciate you and those who don’t. The key lies in being able to address the concerns of those who don’t and leverage the support  of those who do.

In short social media has it’s own rules which need to be understood well before you take the leap. When you do take the leap, embrace this new web culture and don’t hang on to the old policies and you’ll do just great! You’ll eventually see the pros far outweigh any fears you may have had going in. As long as you go in with a flexible mindset and keep the ‘human’ persona of an organization at the forefront you’ll take on anything thrown at you with ease.