Corporate responsibility to social media
This post was made Apr 03, 2009 by Jeff Noethen
We live in an age where we can type an email, IM a friend, tweet about our latest goings on, update our Facebook status, and (still) text/call someone all from our cell phone. Could we do this four years ago? We barely texted on our cell phone four years ago. However, I’m not going to repeat what’s already been well documented about the advancements of our technology. Check out this video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpEnFwiqdx8
This blog is more focused on corporate responsibility to social media. Companies owe it to themselves to not only invest marketing dollars in today’s social media platforms, but they also need to have a paid staff member that is thinking up the next new thing or at least working on making her company one of the initial participants in said new social media forum. For decades now companies have talked about thinking outside the box, yet how is it that the small companies always seem to be the most innovative and cutting edge?
The internet and what you can do with it, or on it, is growing at an exponential pace. The problem with most of Corporate America is that it does not accelerate or adapt that fast. It’s changes come measured and weighed and only implemented when deemed a good idea; typically a low risk, medium reward type of strategy.
I won’t say that there is anything wrong with this (yet). It’s worked for them for many decades now*. However, with the way that things are changing and the rate at which these things are changing all businesses need to take note and keep up with the Joneses. (*Note: I find it humbling to think about how fast things have progressed in the past 10 years or so, when you compare to how long ago the Industrial Revolution began)
How do they do this? For starters, I think corporations should embrace some sort of a business version of a Myspace/Facebook more fully. Sure many companies have a Myspace/Facebook page, but what if there were a site specific for business, set up similarly to the yellow pages, where individuals could go on and become a fan of all of their favorite businesses and could write reviews about their favorite items, or shopping experiences, etc. Myspace is actually working with Citysearch on a site just like this.
I also still think that forums such as Second Life will be a great way to have customers experience your site in a completely different fashion. It may be a few years off still but I do think that more and more people will enjoy a VR experience of shopping much more than the current ‘flat’ web experience.
Finally, having online events that mirror events offline can create great buzz and lead to great new lead generation etc. For instance if you are having a new store opening in Denver, why not have a live video feed as well has have users be able to upload a cell phone pick with their comments about it? This last technology is currently available through a website called http://www.blahgnow.com/ for one.
Regardless of what a company does, I think that to some extent, you can afford to mess up a time or two and still rebound just fine when it comes to social media. As long as the campaign itself does not take on a negative form, anyone can survive any hiccups.
I agree wholeheartedly with everything you presented. Five years ago I sat in front of my computer and commuted countless times to different meetings. Today my company holds conference calls using Skype and I don’t even have to leave the comfort of my own home. I use my blackberry for just about everything too. Corporate America should make the extra effort and take the extra expense to adapt to our increasingly technology driven lives.
Great post!
I’m not sure how plausible the SecondLife idea would be. Otherwise i think that you bring up a lot of valid points that could be beneficial to corporations as well as consumers.
-Diane
Some really cool info on social media causes: http://mashable.com/2009/05/12/social-media-change-the-world/
A cool communal site to talk about companies and what they are or are not doing socially: http://socialyell.com/