Aug
11

Missing The Edge of Early Adoption Social Media….

Author // Ann
Posted in // Customer experience, Future Trends, Leadership, Management behaviour, Marketing, Social media

 

If you’re a small and medium sized business and still deliberating about social media and its use, you’re too late. You had an 18 month steal on the corporates where the playing field was marginally levelled. You had an opportunity to really take advantage of the slowness of the corporates to respond but they have mobilised their marketing departments, re allocated marketing budgets, commissioned social media consultants to advise them and employed social gurus to future proof them. We are beginning to  see the impact of that in market share which is causing mild concussion for many.

Prepare yourself for the avalanche of Facebook pages, Foursquare accounts, LinkedIn profiles and Google+ posts, if not already. Even the Fire Service and Police are using Flickr and Twitter. By being scared you miss out on so much. Tighten your britches, make some gulping decisions and stop aiming so low. Social media is here in its current recognisable form for the next five years, we can’t predict precisely how the land will lie but we know for definite that its going to get bigger, used more widely, expected even demanded by clients and employees and, finally, its going to change buying behaviour!

If you want to grow competitive revenue streams over the next five years, and who doesn’t, you had better get on board the social ship, the marketing ship you are on now has a great big dirty hole in its side! Don’t get me wrong its not too late to take a deep look at social media, you’re just too late to take the advantage of the short edge you had over the big guys!

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Ann

Ann Holman is the founder of the Ann Holman Company who are social architects and strategists. She is a leading thinker, educator, speaker and consultant in the world of social business, social media, marketing, leadership, strategy and communications. Ann has a passion for understanding how 'social' and 'digital' are changing the landscape we live and work in. Please connect with her on Twitter @annholman
  • John Curran

    It’s true that the big boys are muscling in on the social media space. My recent work with clients in ‘adland’ has highlighted the massive push by corporates to invade the social space and sell us more stuff though Facebook and YouTube. BUT deep down most corporates really don’t get it – they ban access to Twitter and Facebook for their employees while trying to hook new consumers in via these channels at the same time. No matter how many social media consultants or fake bloggers they employ they will still be pushing the spun corporate message. The really big plus for SMEs in using social media is that it allows them to have authentic conversations with their customers and to respond in a way that a big corporate will never be able to. Small is beautiful when it comes to social media. Schumacher would have loved it!

  • Ann

    Hi John, thanks for stopping by and making the comment. I think you are right to highlight that most corporates don’t get it. In fact, most people still don’t get it but they will in time. People didn’t get the ‘web’ in the mid 90′s but they sort of do now! Its interesting that you note that SME’s will be able to get the authentic message across compared with the corporates, that I think, is true. However, it depends on the strategy (if there is one, and there rarely is) does the organisation want to use social media to communicate or to generate revenue, or to do both? Each demands a different approach and I still think that business, no matter what size, see it as route to rescue their business and only generate revenue streams which is sadly old marketing tactics on new channels. What really is exciting is if you can do both…….communicate then drive revenues!