Posted by Jason Harling on Monday 19 January 2009
Webinar udpates
Last week, I attended a webinar on the latest thinking about social networking and media marketing and how it can benefit your brand and company. It was really interesting to listen to what was being said, not least because here at breeze we did know it all anyway! Its always good to keep up to date with your peers, and hear some success stories from other people.
As in any marketing field, the good, the bad and the ugly appear in some guise or another. Nike+ is one of the good guys of this particular stream of thinking, by generating a network of people with a shared passion, who are able to link up with other runners in distant locations. By using events that could only be co-ordinated on-line, Nike has created purpose and on-going interest in its site, and last year managed to have nearly a million users sign up to run a 10k race. This race took place simultaneously in 25 cities.
Dell is another success story of the use of social media marketing. Originally, Dell tried to control the information that was getting into the public domain, particularly when one of their own ex-sales staff started to spill the beans. However, the media coverage only increased as the digital community shared information around the world, resulting in a far worse situation for Dell than the original negative publicity. Now however, having learned from their mistakes, Dell actively encourages feedback from its partners and customers and uses it for research and information.
The key piece of advice I have after listening to this particular presentation is that it is key to understand what you are actually trying to achieve, rather than making sure you use every tool in the box. Whilst I continue to expound the virtues of these very low cost routes to market, they can only work effectively if the aims and objectives are clearly defined from day one. I have one notable contact who has developed a facebook group, in the interest of using digital media. Sadly, the only aim was to ensure that as many people as possible had signed up to the group, without knowing what the group was designed to do. As a result, I see the group has now started to dwindle in numbers, as the joiners have no idea what they are doing there. Not the greatest piece of coverage for a media company who frankly should know better!