Social media: It’s not just another communication channel

In a discussion with Carpenter Group earlier this month, Pauline Ores, an accomplished social media marketing consultant who most recently led IBM’s social engagement strategy and innovation practice, shared her insights on how social media is causing communication to evolve and how it’s impacting traditional marketing and business practices.

“Quite often, when companies think ‘social media strategy,’ the first things that come to mind are applications, platforms or whether or not their brand should have a Facebook page,” Ores told Carpenter Group. “This is a narrow perspective. Marketers need to think beyond creating a brand presence online, and consider social media’s impact on the marketplace as a whole. Social media isn’t an opt-in strategy. In most cases, it’s already affecting their brand, even if companies have chosen not to participate in social media strategies.”

Many people believe social media is just a new communication channel. Ores disagrees. Radio, television, cable and even web advertising are communication channels, and have been embraced by marketers because their models are fairly straightforward: pay for air time/message space, transmit desired message. Despite common perceptions, social media does more than simply allow Marketers to transmit messages. Unlike any of the channels that came before it, social media connects users and facilitates widespread distribution of content—transforming traditional marketing and the marketplace itself.

Social Media’s Key Differentiators

Ores believes social media leaves traditional marketing and communication efforts outshouted, outscoped and outsold. “Here's why,” Ores says, “social media takes into account three key differentiators: volume, viewpoint and value.”

• Volume—Traditional marketing content is being dwarfed by the exponentially greater volume of online user-generated content. In the past, when it came to competing for the market’s attention, brands sparred against one another—Hertz versus Avis, Colgate versus Crest, etc. Social media enables clients, and even prospects, to enter the arena and flood the web with their opinions on companies. The sheer volume of user-generated content dilutes the paid content and renders traditional marketing outshouted.
• Viewpoint—An increase in message volume naturally brings forth a variety of viewpoints. Through social media, client opinions commingle with the very different viewpoints of the marketers. Marketing content, better known according to Ores as “it” content, has a sharp focus on a brand or service’s benefits, and as a rule, drives toward a single point in time, the transaction. Clients, however, generate what Ores refers to as “me” content, which centers on an individual’s needs over the long term, rather than a brand’s benefits. “For example, ‘me’ content about a small cap mutual fund may address a how well the investment fits into my retirement portfolio, if it will suit my investment objectives in 15 years, and how it performs versus its competitors. It’s likely that a prospective investor can find ten different viewpoints on that same small cap fund online, making the singularly-focused content generated by the fund company’s marketing increasingly outscoped,” Ores explained.
• Value—Social media applications like Twitter, Facebook and Delicious encourage clients to spread this “me” content broadly, and almost instantaneously. The inherent value is that this content is timely, targeted and real. Though the content isn’t always positive, it’s derived from a personal interaction with the brand. For example, families with children post online reviews about a child-friendly resort they’ve visited. A mother looking to travel with her toddler then reads these families’ feedback on the resort’s cleanliness and childcare quality—relevant information that she wouldn’t find on the resort website. “This type of rich, experience-driven information available now through social media is what many consumers are yearning for,” says Ores, “and it’s leaving traditional marketing content dimensionally challenged and outsold.”

How to make social media work for you

Social media’s ubiquity now drives the marketplace, not the company, to define marketing. In the past, companies optimized their marketing for a specific type of marketplace. With the marketplace evolving, it stands to reason that marketing must adapt and transform.

Adding social media to the list of tactics in a company’s marketing plan is not enough. Ores suggests, “All firms, even those not actively engaging the marketplace through social media, need to evaluate how social media impacts their marketing structure as a whole—its funding model, processes, strategy, tactics and measurement. As social media conversations often cut across business divisions and demand timely responses, naturally this new marketplace will favor firms that can be agile, responsive and proactive.”

Even Marketers in highly-regulated industries such as financial services must, at the very least, monitor what’s being communicated about their brand, products and services online through social media research. “If compliance restrictions prevent financial marketers from proactively engaging the marketplace through social media applications, Marketers can simply channel insights from the social marketplace to the appropriate management, product development, branding, and sales teams. Thorough, accurate and consistently-monitored online research—that digs deeper than traditional websites to encompass communities, comments and conversations—will enhance traditional marketing activities and help businesses keep pace in the age of social media,” according to Ores.

With the dawn of social media, like it or not, the way companies communicate with clients has fundamentally changed. It’s doubtful than any industry is exempt from social media’s impact, so understanding how social media works and implementing a strategy to address it are critical in managing brand messages. If Marketers fail to properly address social media, they risk their brand losing relevance, and will miss out on critical opportunities to engage with their clients.

About Pauline Ores

Widely recognized for her social media subject matter expertise, Pauline Ores is a consultant helping firms develop new marketing strategies and integrate social media and search marketing into their existing programs. Pauline has been involved in social networks and community building for over fifteen years at Apple Computer, iVillage and IBM.

Most recently, working at IBM in Corporate Marketing she developed cross-IBM enterprise social networking strategies, metrics and business insights that accelerated growth. Other roles during her nearly twelve years at IBM include marketing strategy for IBM's UNIX server business, interactive marketing innovation, and helping to develop ibm.com. She organized IBM's internal Social Media Marketing Community, with members from over 30 countries, which provided training and education.

She serves on Search Engine Strategies’ Advisory Board and has spoken at numerous professional conferences such as iMedia, WOMMA, Marketing 2.0, AdTech and others.

For more than three decades, Carpenter Group has helped financial services organizations grow their businesses and improve profitability through objective business advice, branding and marketing solutions, and creative services. Carpenter Group brings together seasoned professionals from the financial services, branding and creative industries to develop and implement solutions that drive business goals forward.

Our clients include many of the most prominent firms in the asset management, investment banking, insurance, brokerage and commercial banking sectors.

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