How does it relate to you?
Social Media/”Consumer Generated Media”, although fairly new compared to other forms of online communication is the third most popular way to spend time online, in fact 1/5 of all time spent online, in the UK is spent on Social Networks. Added to this is the perception, among the more traditional among you is that Social Networks are there just for younger audiences that just spend most their time on Facebook/Myspace/YouTube. Yes these are key sites, and yes young people are still in these spaces, but there is a huge space online that is inhabited by all ages, in fact between April 08 – April 09 18-34 age group lost a 8.3% share of online user composition, in community member sites. There is almost an equal share between 18-34 and 35-49 age groups, if you then add in 50-64 group, the share held by 18-34’s is looking rather small.
Once you take away the big sites I have mentioned above, naming another 7 Social Media sites which reach over 3m unique users (in the UK) per month might be a bit of stretch and no Twitter isn’t one of them! But this just points out there is huge untapped market, where you can interact, it doesn’t have to be through the initial channels that you would think of.
So basically, pretty much all age groups are using Social Media, you know their interests, age group and where they live. For Marketers, this is a dream, as all over the internet users can be talking about your brand, doing some of the leg work for you.
Who rules online?
This would be fantastic if everything being said was positive, however as we all know, this is not the case! What has happened is that control has been taken away from brand’s and instead given to the public. A scary thought indeed, but you can help even the balance through buzz monitoring, such as Neoco’s PoNo service. But added to this you can interact with disgruntled consumers in a very public place and can in fact turn negative publicity into a very positive outcome. Toyota did this in the states with one of their best selling car’s, the Camry. They opened a dialogue with key bloggers who were unhappy with the product, helped improve the product and in front of a huge audience of readers solved the problems for them. This was great PR, and was widely praised in blogs. For organisations who do latch on to this new approach to marketing, that sometimes you do make mistakes, but you are happy to rectify them, its a huge step forward and can forge trust in a brand that cannot be repeated elsewhere.
One thing you need to think of before approaching the world of social media is planning. With both negative and positive outcomes in mind, knowing how to react to them before they come. Having key set of objectives and KPI’s in place so you can track how well your campaign is doing, whether this is brand awareness or ROI. When it comes to planning and experience Neoco are digital experts, so please drop us a line to find out how are tools and services can help you.
Thanks to the guest speaker Alex Burmaster, from Nielsen.
Tags Branding breakfast buzz Buzz Monitoring Facebook marketing Nielsen Nielsen Online Online Marketing social media Social Net WOM WOM-UK WOMUK word of mouth YouTube