My most recent project has been to develop a proposal for defero, a media consulting company that is looking to make the jump into a Web 2.0 world. You can view it here. Once again, I used Google Sites to create and host my site. I noticed that my work on Google Sites went a lot smoother than last time. I guess experience is the best teacher.
In order to create an effective proposal, I needed to research how companies are using social media and find examples of its effective use by corporations. During this process, I learned a great deal about the different ways that companies are maximizing the potential of the technologies that I often take for granted. I use social media on a daily basis (and often more than once a day): I log into Twitter regularly (but you probably figured that one out already), and I also check my Facebook account on a near-daily basis. Like most people my age (mid-20s), I'm a huge fan of YouTube and have over a hundred videos on my Favorites list. I've dabbled in social bookmarking, and I've come to rely on Wikipedia when I want to find basic information about a topic (linking to a Wikipedia article about Wikipedia...doesn't get much more meta than that). And, of course, I blog.
But I never gave much thought to how corporate entities would use these tools. When companies began to use platforms like Facebook to spread their message, I actually resented it a little bit. I figured that I was already bombarded with advertisements and longed for the days of my early Internet experience (circa 1997) when ads on the Internet weren't as intrusive and pervasive as they can be today. But then I remembered how the times when I got kicked off my dial-up connection about ten times per night and how slow the pages would load, and I thanked my lucky stars that the Internet/technology in general had advanced as much as it did over the past twelve years. But I digress....
As I learned more about the corporate use of social media, I found examples that I had never seen before and made a mental note of which companies I thought were most innovative. For instance, I had no idea that Adobe had a Delicious account where it shared links and resources with its customers. And I also wasn't aware of the existence of Coca-Cola's Facebook page (which, I might add, is the best corporate presence on Facebook that I've ever seen). I give Coca-Cola a lot of credit: the company has been around for over a hundred years, and yet its page is twice as rich as those of some companies that are half as old.
The more I researched, the more I saw that social media is really a reiterative, circular process: post content that you find or create for others to talk about, get exposed to cool/informative content posted by others, repeat. At least, that's how it seems to be for companies. An individual can merely absorb content without contributing any, but where's the fun in that?
I also found that as I was exposed to more corporate use of social media, I began to view companies that didn't make use of social media tools to be behind the times and irrelevant. Is that fair? Maybe, maybe not. But it does speak to the power and importance of having a Web 2.0 marketing strategy and presence.
How about you: what do you think of my proposal? Do you have any memorable experiences with company-generated social media content? Do you think that corporations who don't use social media are irrelevant? Share away!
No comments:
Post a Comment