Ushahidi in Forbes Magazine (Photo credit: whiteafrican)
Lois Geller does a great piece on social media. She reveals how poorly some companies are doing it, and how so many don’t have a real clear cut business purpose. Using real numbers from 3M, Coke, and Pepsi it’s a good read:
Social Media Marketing: What’s The Point?
Advertisers lost control of the media years ago when the Internet gave all the target audiences the power to run their own message delivery systems.
I’m not sure we’d fully recovered from that peaceful revolution when another gigantic wave hit us, then another and another: Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, blogs, Yelp, Foursquare, and on and on.
The whole Social Media thing can be very confusing which partly explains the problems some companies are experiencing with it.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/loisgeller/2012/09/04/social-media-marketing-whats-the-point/
She then asks how businesses are using social media.
My Comment:
Social media can be used in so many different parts of a business. It can simply be another line of communication, like a new telephone number. Or it can be a customer out reach program, fostering current customers relations and gathering consumer feedback. But some how these new innovations always tend to fall in the marketing departments lap… How do we make money on this? How do we use this to get more customers? It can do that too, but that may be one of it’s least effective uses.
We use it for customer outreach and retention. It’s primary use for this pest control guy is to add another line of communication with existing customers. And Facebook is the platform of choice for that. The value in this comes in customer retention. We believe that a customer who likes you on facebook is more likely to keep your service.
But don’t mind me… I am just a pest control guy.
Thomas B.
Bulwark Exterminating
P.S. @Lois… Find it kinda interesting the Forbes does not have an easy location on it’s page here for me to find your twitter account. Plus the twitter button on the left adds a mention to @Sharethis and not to you as an author. I may be a prude, but I’d like to give credit to the author when I share articles. Social Media to me is about identifying with people first. I think Forbes is missing the boat here. In fact, the “Follow” button at the top only leads me to follow you on the Forbes website…. Disappointing.
Sadly that will not be retweeted as I originally intended to do because Lois deserves the mention, not @Sharethis… and at minimum Forbes should be mentioned in the tweet. I would probably be more forgiving had the article not been about Social Media.
