The Bandwagon Has Broken

It seems most large and small companies have decided social media is WORTH IT – but don’t exactly know what that means

They’ve jumped on the bandwagon, because they’ve heard “they need it”, “everyone’s doing it” “tell your intern to do it”, without researching and learning about what social media can do. These people infuriate me.  People who assume that just because they started a page and a twitter account, follow zero people, stuck an intern on it to post articles about themselves – or worse – times their store is open or short and irrelevant posts, that all this means you “GET” social media and you’re “in the social space”. It does not. It means that you don’t understand what it can do for your business, nor do you actually care.

Social media is not a fad. It’s changing the way people do business, and it’s bringing power back to the consumers. Consumers are fed up with traditional advertising that is stuffed down their throats, even by brands they do adore.  Everyone has an opinion, so why not start listening to your customers’ opinions?  Social media has opened the floodgates to engagement opportunities, both positive and negative, and it will be detrimental in the long run if you choose to ignore this.  

Many companies have figured this out as well, some are doing a great job at monitoring social media, while others are slowly starting to figure this all out and cave to hiring social media managers, social media interns and such.  The problem is that now everyone’s on there, doing the same thing. They respond to the negative issues with generic tweets, they try to throw a “social media sweepstakes” and give away something small and unsubstantial thinking this will grow fans, and everyone is starting to blend in and act the same online.

I challenge those who care about social media to take it all a step further, because your competition is catching up to you. Start thinking further outside the box, stop watching what others do, look inside your brand and find your company’s core values and start using that to your advantage.

Now that everyone’s caught up to you, how will you continue innovating the social media space?