Love it or hate it, with Facebook fast approaching 200 million users worldwide and Twitter adding thousands of new members daily, not to mention the popularity already established with platforms such as Linkedin, YouTube, Flickr and MySpace, the social media channel of influence can make or break a brand. The share of adult Internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years – from 8% in 2005 to 35%, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s December 2008 tracking survey.
The web has given consumers a voice that simply can’t be ignored. As people realize they have the power of voice and user-generated content proliferates, online conversations are influencing brand and reputation. With easy-to-publish tools like blogs and RSS content feeds, anyone and everyone can be an author, expressing their opinions online.
The key is to define your social media strategy sooner, rather than wait for a point in time when you may have to be re-active rather than pro-active toward the medium. Whether it is a comprehensive strategic plan to making a brand’s presence known among social media channels, or a short-term experiment into the space, such as a contest or other promotional campaign, brand’s need be bold and step into this brave new world where consumers are hanging out and, in some cases, stirring your own little revolutions. It should be a well thought-out consideration that responds to the tools, dynamics, time frames, and to the appropriateness, timing, and rhythms of the community.
Consumer Generated Media (CGM) is something to be reckoned with, first by knowing what is being said about your brand and second, by taking action based on the facts. With customers ganging up on companies on Facebook, defining them on Wikipedia and talking about their products and services, it is essential to undertake some kind of brand monitoring. Brand monitoring helps identify influencers in the market, it can act as an early warning system if a crisis is brewing and it can also generate new product and marketing ideas.
“Reputation and brand are two sides of the same coin. You need to monitor one and build the other,” says Paul Dunav in Buzz Marketing for Technology.
