Social Media Marketing: Listening and Participating
Social media is providing marketers with an array of tools and opportunities that offer an unusual entree into understanding the good, bad and ugly of how customers use and perceive brands, your company and even your employees. In today’s world, it is increasingly critical to understand your specific customer needs and to build business relationships both on a local and global basis. Those strategies become more challenging, however, as the landscape grows more complex. New media strategies present a means of closing the communication gap brought on by time and distance. Valuable global relations are being created through tools that range from text messages to microblogs, podcasts, vlogs (video blogs), social networking communities and traditional blogs. By leveraging these new technologies, people exchange ideas and information, and discover common experiences that transcend cultural differences. Listening and participating in ongoing conversations enables organizations to develop a stronger emotional engagement with customers, prospects and other stakeholders. So begins my white paper, Listening and Participating, that was recently published in Montgomery Research’s new online publication Perform, the marketing 2.0 authority. Thanks to Patricia Witkin for the opportunity. In addition to building relationships, I also explore how social media is impacting the business of doing business. Although the customer purchase decision is complex, and social media is but one influencing factor, information gleaned from listening to digital conversations can have an impact on how an organization conducts business and, in turn, can set internal cultural changes in motion: From a C-suite perceptive, the challenge… Continue to read more…
