At this point in time most of us have participated in social media, read endlessly about it, and have seen that it is of value to companies/ brands of all sizes if used properly. The reasoning behind why social media took off and has grown so much is as simple as understanding human psychology.
1) People do not want to be lied to and social media offers more transparency
2) People want to feel accepted and social media gives us that through “following”, “fan pages”, and the overall community vibe
3) People want to voice their opinion and social media gives each and every one of us a platform
Social media, more often than not, levels the playing field. It makes the once “untouchable” people approachable and the average Joe far more important because he’s now in the conversation. We have no idea what the next chapter will be, as this is changing everyday; but we do know the value of being involved in this growing community.
Matt,
Good start. For me social media is all about the conversation. For so long it has been one-sided as business pushes there messages, marketing, and products at us. If you’re in business it’s been about guessing correctly about what the market wants and then trying to deliver.
Social media is about relevancy. The markets are now telling us exactly what they want and they’re talking about how well we’re achieving that. I’ve been surprised over and over by the differences in what we thought was the right way to go, only to find from the responses out there in the blogshpere, etc that what was really the right direction was something completely different.
For traditional business, social media also means surrendering a certain amount of control. That’s a hard thing to do when you don’t understand how social media works. Most companies get it wrong and ultimately hurt themselves.
You are right about watching this unfold. It is definitely a ride and an interesting one at that.
Thank you Mark, very much appreciated coming from a guy like you. And you’re spot on when it comes to the changes, even in my life time the differences in marketing are astonishing. One thing about it, if you don’t like rides you’re going to miss out because this is an amazing forum and it continues to grow.
I look forward to the journey and adapting to it…or helping to create it!! Thanks again, I hope all is well!!