Social Media: Back to the Future

Most marketers agree: Meet your customers where they live--home, business, third place--and then listen to their wants and needs so that we can meet or exceed their wants and needs, all the while creating great customer experiences. It's a heck of a challenge. And, frankly, social media has made our jobs both easier and more difficult. Here's why.

The way to converse with customers first comes from knowing the above and then using the means that our customers want us to use--direct mail, telemarketing, PR, ads--you know the list. So we segment our customers and talk to them when, where and how they want us to talk to them. We know the when, where and how by asking them and by using the data we collect to learn their wants, needs and desires.

Now come social media tools and social networking. We add them to our marketing tool box. But they come without the accompanying and necessary customer data. So we step back and ask questions we thought we knew the answers to:

• Who wants to read blogs and talk with us through that communications device?
• Who wants to watch video or listen to a podcast or meet us a LinkedIn, Plaxo Pulse or Facebook?

We have to learn the answers so that we can effectively move into the future of marketing. More tools require more listening, more learning and more reaching out to people in ways they want to be touched so that we can discover and respond to their wants and needs.

Many of us have spent the past two years or more finding those answers, which can be discovered through the data we access by understanding who our blog readers are and who our social networking connections are, and then reaching out to them. The other tools--video and podcasts--present more of a challenge.

My question to you is how are you using social media, what are you learning from it, and is it helping you reach old and new customers? What is the social media bottom line and how long will it take us to understand it and use it effectively by integrating social media and social networking into our marketing plans?

Comments

[Chris Kieff]

Lewis,

You're absolutely right. This is the age where people expect to be connected with in their place and time. Gone is the age of "come to our place, at our time, and work within our rules." Now is the time when the customer demands that you should be where they want to find you. Because if you don't do it, I'll find a competitor of yours who will.

Excellent Post,
Chris

[Lewis Green]

Chris,

You are so right. I even see that trend in blogs, as subscriptions (RSS feeds) go up while visitors go down. I look forward to the changes that will make business relationships easier.

Lewis