The importance of social media

PwC recently hosted a series of events in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne for our clients with David Meerman Scott, US-based marketing strategist and author of the #1 best seller, The New Rules of Marketing & PR. David educated the audience on the importance of social media and real time marketing and how businesses can make the most of the new opportunities this affords.

What is social media?

Social media are tools and technologies that enable you to communicate with your customers - in places where they are congregating. Social media includes:
  • blogs
  • wikis
  • video
  • photo sharing.
A subset of social media is social networking; examples include Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Real time communication

Real time communication takes minutes – not hours or days. It's when ideas flow from customers and events and companies produce a product in response to feedback in the market.

David discussed the need to create a business culture based on speed and looking at what is happening in the market today - not spending time predicting what it will be doing. If you launch a new product now, the initial momentum will give you a competitive advantage than can last years. The same can be said for social media. If you're first to engage, people will notice your offering and it will gain attention.

It's about the buyers, not your product

The important thing to remember when you're thinking about marketing is that it's not just about your product, it's also about your services, and above all, the buyers of your products. When you focus on the buyers you can start to create compelling web content to reach them. The more content you have the more visible you will become in search engines.

How to engage customers with social media

On the web, customers, businesses and the media can immediately see what's on people's minds. Now is the time to be monitoring what they're saying about you and your products. Having a presence on blogs, forums and chat rooms with your customers shows that you care about the people who spend money on your products. You should participate regularly and not wait for a crisis to use social media. This includes participating in their forums as well as your own. This shows you care about them enough to communicate with them on their own turf as well as your own.

How do you respond to a crisis? In a crisis, respond quickly in the forum where the negative feedback has been posted - if it's on Twitter, respond on Twitter. If you need to look into their feedback and find an answer, ask them if you can contact them offline. This turns the negative experience into a positive one.

The rules of social media

The rules of social media are up to you - as David says, treat Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other web and social media like they are a real cocktail party - you probably wouldn't try and attend ten parties in one night as you wouldn't get to spend any real quality time with anyone. However, if you limit yourself to a couple of parties you might have a couple of rewarding and interesting conversations.

David says we need far more trust in the workplace when it comes to social media. Put guidelines in place to guide people into how they should be behaving, not restrictions. Ensure there are consequences if a person does the wrong thing. Although one person may say something negative, there are 100 others who will post positive comment. Don't be swayed by the negative, focus on the positive.

You can follow David via Twitter on @dmscott and read his blog.

Other Events

We will continue to hold targeted, relevant events for our clients and guests throughout the year. Please advise Abbie Boulter if you would like to be included on our mailing list.