Social Media - The False Security Of Talking

We humans are a social creature. It is our ability to network, coordinate, and share our experiences that allows us to develop, progress and ultimately improve the ways in which we do things here on this lonely planet in the corner of the Milky Way.

The cultural embracing (read "devouring") of technology (especially mobile/internet technologies) over the last few decades has flashed a lot of binary chatter across our eyes in the form of blogs, podcasts, status updates and tweets. Indeed, I often find it hard to not receive an email or notification every five seconds about what someone I remotely know is doing or thinking or reading or listening to or...

You know the feeling.

We can only assume this increase in visible babble is gold to the inboxs of big business keen to hear how their brands are being perceived and discussed by consumers.

What's more, the immediacy of the internet and social networking suggests corporations and commercial entities can react faster than ever before in the history of advertising to customer reaction and suggestion.

Until recently, I took this as a simple logical truth. This is why I was surprised to read last month that a social media survey conducted on behalf of PRWeek and MS&L (interestingly for PRWeek and CA Walker) found that

"marketers don't make changes to their products based on customer feedback, despite monitoring feedback being one of the most common business uses of social media in the first place"

The survey continues to state that an amazing 70% of marketers don't make changes to a product or marketing effort based on feedback from consumers on social media sites. This shows a high level of skepticism in the corporate world towards the weight of review social media can provide. Whether this is the result of limited implementation/strategy timeframe, lack of experience with social media, professional hesitation, the global nature of social media (and the need to impliment a global campaign) or a fundamental conviction there is no ROI with social media is hard to say.

Let's take a look at why the 271 interviewed CMO's and MD's use social media:

• Managing and monitoring customer feedback
• Understanding the consumer and competitive landscape
• Reaching key influencers

"Customer feedback should be the front lines of product development," says Jim Tsokanos, MS&L’s president, North America. "Marketers need to act on information culled from social sites and are missing out on a key opportunity to improve and shape their products and programs based on what their consumers need and want."

Tsokanos also stated that "if brands do not have a social media presence, consumers will create one for them." I found this very interesting and possibly a professional reasoning as to why marketers might shy away from including social media budget in their campaigns. If the fans are going to do it anyways, with a "roots up" element to it that no amount of tricky flash or online giveaway can compete with, then why spend thousands on a social media element to a brand campaign?

Obviously there are incentives in consumer information and additional behavioural monitoring that can be analysed when your fanbase passed through your own servers, but can 39% of senior marketing executives saying none of their current marketing budget is dedicated to social media programs truly believe the wiki culture of the internet will do their job for them?

Hopefully they learn soon it's not about what people are saying about your brand, but rather are brands listening? That is the new competitive advantage.