Validating the Social Media Message
June’s elections in Iran brought social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube further onto the world stage. Social media continues to penetrate politics – its power being evident in President Barack Obama’s use of the medium as a major campaign tool in the 2008 presidential election. In the case of the Iran protests, ordinary citizens provided play-by-play journalism since traditional news organizations were shut down by authorities.
Dean Wright, in a blog post he wrote for Reuters, made an interesting argument. He pointed out that verification is a major issue. I’m paraphrasing here, but he said that content being shared might not be what it appears to be, either because of sloppy information from the person posting it, or deliberate deceit, either to create mischief or for political or other reasons. Dean warns that news outlets need to be extremely careful about what is written and said about material accessed from social networking sites – not taking it at face value.
So that led me to think about “verification” from a PR perspective (of course). While social media tears down the proverbial wall between the outside world and the companies that utilize these tools to communicate and interact with their following, how can we be sure of the validity of the message? Again, “not taking it at face value”, as Dean puts it.
It comes down to a few things. Companies need to engage in conversations that may or may not have a direct link to their business, but offer something of value to the industry and or community, customers, partners, prospects, etc. We’ve all heard this before, but it really is a give-and-take. The more frequently companies engage in social media conversations and the more transparent the communication is — no contrived marketing jargon that is – the more likely they are to build not only a network of followers, but invested participants in their business and industry.
An important way for companies to be seen by the outside world as a legitimate expert and resource in their space is to leverage existing partners and customers in more open social media platforms like industry forums, blogs and portals. There is power in numbers. A single real-time repository of shared expertise has a greater chance of being perceived less as a marketing or PR tool and more as a go-to resource, which can go a long way toward improving brand reputation, recognition and bumping your company up in the Google search rankings.
But what about leveraging interactions with existing customers to further validate the social media message and build brand loyalty? I’m not talking about simply responding to a disgruntled customer via Twitter to provide him/her with a rapid and satisfying response, though this certainly has merit. I’m talking about using social media to constantly evolve the brand, educate potential prospects to real-time challenges and best practices and offer solutions all based in on-the-spot analysis and interpretation of current customer interactions taking place. In today’s competitive marketplace reacting is a weakness. Companies must proactively anticipate to turn heads and break through the noise. By utilizing interactions with those closest to the business and its products (customers, partners, shareholders) social media content is built on transparency, a free flow of ideas and a genuine investment of one entity in another, whether it be company to customer, company to prospect, customer to customer, partner to prospect … well, you get the idea.
Tags: citizen journalism, Facebook, Iran protests, President Obama, Reuters, social media, Twitter, YouTube