Brand and message control is an illusion…so your product and service had better be awesome.
The current rush by companies to implement a social media strategy is interesting to watch, but often misses the point. Too many marketers are still thinking in a uni-directional way…asking “how do we use social media to get our message out?” Even some savvy marketers who recognize that social media enables easier dialogs with their customers are missing a big piece of the sea change that is going on here.
Your brand/product/service is already being discussed and you have very little ability to effect that conversation just by having a social media strategy. Don’t get me wrong, it is HUGELY important to be involved, responsive, and real as a human voice in social media, representing your thing. But while you can help around the edges, the real conversation will be dictated by what you do, not by what you say.
Is your product amazing? People will talk about it. Does your customer service suck? Believe me…people will talk about it. They always have. It’s just that they used to talk to a dozen of their friends and that story might have spread to a dozen more if it was remarkable.
Social media today gives people a VIRAL MEGAPHONE to reach a lot more people. And you had better hope you don’t piss off someone who is really creative…witness the video below. This is a (very funny) customer complaint that at last count had reached 2.5 MILLION views…I saw it over the weekend in a few different blog/Twitter streams that I follow.
Seth Godin has been saying this for a long time. Develop something remarkable and people will talk about you. Today they just might reach millions of people talking about you. You had better hope it is for the good you did and not the bad…
Image credit – taken from United Breaks Guitars video by Dave Carroll