Enable Social Media in the Company: a cultural evolution
If it is true that almost nine US companies out of 10 (with at least 100 employees) will use Social Media in 2015 to set up new marketing strategies, in Italy the situation can not be considered so optimistic. On the one hand, we have large companies, with considerable budgets, resources, vision and know-how, on the other, thousands of small, medium and micro businesses looking for low-cost marketing actions and with immediately perceptible returns.
And here’s a sore point, to believe that Social Media marketing is synonymous with low-cost marketing.
Surely compared to other forms of advertising costs less, but (there is always a but) everything depends on what is meant by social media marketing and what benchmarks are adopted.
Consider that, to produce tangible results, the social media marketig can not be limited to creating a page on Facebook where to share a content from time to time.
A good social media marketing plan will have to consider numerous social channels, through which to share valuable content, information, reception and management of user conversations. We are talking about an important investment in terms of time and resources, the involvement of the company in its entirety, therefore not at all cheap.
In fact one of the main obstacles to be faced, once the company has decided to seriously approach Social Media, concerns the skills of the employees. Enabling social media in the company is a cultural step that can destabilize the usual working patterns and a rethinking of the concept of company leadership. The ideal would be a generation of entrepreneurs and managers who could become activators and promoters of the connection between people , a new form of knowledge sharing, aimed at creating new relationships, skills and aware participation.
It is on this field that the challenge of Social Media would then be played, the concept of Corporate Social Media that involves having to interact to share the contents to be published , thus greater sense of belonging , transparency and sociality at all levels, online and offline. .
Social Media Marketing and Companies: where does the dialogue start?
Companies are asking themselves: where to start? How to understand what customers think of us, even compared to competitors? Where to intercept conversations? How to predict if a product will be successful or not? And above all, how to engage customers in order to improve image and business?
And this is where we have to give an answer.
Listening, first of all. Monitor conversations, understand needs and needs . All this before involving users directly. It will be essential to study a communication that puts us on the same level, which promotes empathy, active involvement. Only in this way will the user become our satisfied customer, the ambassador of our product on Social.
This step will make our customers Partners to all the effects of our project , as they will contribute with their knowledge, ideas, suggestions to the evolution of the product itself, increasing awareness through word of mouth .
Approaching Social channels, with studied and targeted strategies, adds to the company an unimaginable value only a few years ago. Once again, the challenge will be played on the ability of companies to evolve culturally , innovate processes and encourage training, then internal skills, change strategies, roles and responsibilities. Indispensable must be the change of existing models and language, we must adopt appropriate behavior to the world ‘social’, then transparency, comparison, sharing, dialogue, consistency.
Are you a company that is preparing to land on social media? How are you setting up your strategy? Would you like to have an expert on Social Media Marketing?
