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This Just In…
Social media in 2009: A tale of two futures
January 12, 2009
Copyright © 2009 PRSA. All rights reserved.
By Jim Nail
The following article appears in the January 2009 issue of PR Tactics.
Crystal balls are notoriously unreliable. And with the current economic situation, they are even murkier than usual. Even so, one projection for 2009 is indisputable: Consumers’ use of social media will continue to boom.
Forrester Research recently noted a 33 percent increase in the number of online consumers using social media in 2008 versus 2007. With 75 percent of online consumers now engaged in some form of social media, we will see an end to the questions of whether your target audience uses these tools.
My first prediction: In 2009, the talk will turn to how much time consumers spend in various types of social media venues as compared to other online and offline media activities.
In response to this embrace of social media, companies will not only begin to consider whether they should blog, but also how to operationalize an ongoing dialogue with customers, prospective customers and other audiences. At TNS Cymfony, we have seen companies build social media marketing departments, create positions such as “director of community” and develop disciplined strategic plans to build their capabilities in social networking and engaging in conversations.
I feel very confident about my second prediction: The conference and webinar circuit will continue to hawk the promise of leveraging social media to drive their growth.
Therein lies the dilemma for 2009.
The use of social media in public relations can go in two directions: one in which it becomes an indispensable tool in building relationships with our publics, and one in which the rush by companies to exploit this power results in a backlash greater than that of pop-up ads a few years ago.
A peek into the future
Let’s explore what these two futures might look like.
Recent articles and surveys have proclaimed that a bad economy will be good for the use of social media in business. With companies tightening budgets across the board, communications in all forms will be constrained. The search for a cheap medium to distribute key messages is primary to social media. What could be cheaper or become more widely distributed than digitally-enhanced word–of–mouth?
The year 2009 could see a flood of businesses rushing headlong into social media and using it as a channel to push messages at consumers: bombarding bloggers with press releases, saturating social networks with earnings announcements and filling forums and discussion boards with the newly hired CEO’s vision for the company.
How will the members of these communities respond? Facebook users have already revolted against the Beacon ad program that targeted the site. We also recently saw microblogging mothers cause an uprising on Twitter that took down Motrin’s new TV and print ad campaign. If social media users can chase a major brand off TV, surely they can send a company scurrying away from social media if it offends them or invades their personal space.
In an extreme situation, consumers could end up viewing the presence of any company as an unwelcome intrusion. Some entrepreneur will likely respond to this with a widget to block messages from any corporate entity — the social media equivalent of the pop-up blocker.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. A study by Cone, a strategy and communications agency, showed that 85 percent of social media users want companies to interact with them using these tools. But 51 percent want companies to interact only “as needed or by request.” The two most desired interactions were problem solving and inviting feedback from consumers.
Companies pursuing the good side of social media, seeking a mutually beneficial reaction rather than pushing a marketing agenda, will pursue a three-pronged route in 2009:
Invite: Companies will create communities, build feedback mechanisms on their brand Web sites, communicate the fact that they are present in social media and welcome their audiences into a conversation.
Listen: In addition to their own communities, companies should tap the spectrum of social media formats to hear what their audiences need and want from them.
Respond: Beyond posting in these communities, companies should use the valuable ideas and suggestions they receive to make changes in products, messages, and processes to enhance the value audiences get from the relationship with the company.
This path is not the immediate solution that we would like to counter the challenges in the market. It is not the series of campaigns or sequence of discrete events that are embedded in current communications approaches. It turns the focus from company-centric to audience-centric and promises a relationship in which consumers and customers seek out our products and services, instead of us targeting them.
What’s my prediction for which path businesses will take? This is where my crystal ball fogs up. But the fate of social media is not in the stars, but in our own decisions. Which path will you choose for your company or clients in 2009?
Jim Nail is chief strategy and marketing officer of TNS Cymfony, which offers technology and services to help brands and companies understand and act on what journalists, bloggers and other audiences are saying about them.
Comments
Patricia Powell says:
Great article...I myself have noticed more and more companies are positioning themselves as social media experts and hawking the ability to teach said knowledge..personally I think your backlash position will come to pass ...my experience in the social media space is people can tell when they are being manipulated and they don't like it!
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