I'm back from 2 great weeks in Turkey.
In my mail, there is a request from Kosta, the organizer of the new media event in Dubai, asking the speakers to produce a 2 minutes video about social media. Usually, I give speeches between 20 minutes and 2 hours (for workshops)... but I never had to make an "elevator speech" about social media.
So, since yesterday I wonder how I could summarize my belief about social media and (new) marketing in 2 minutes?
It could be something like this:
Social media is one of the ways the (advanced) internet population chose to engage with the possibilities offered by today's technologies. In the social media era, every contributor is a media with more or less audience. Many people try to define social media but most definitions remain too vague (and could even be applied to very old technologies like forums or chat rooms).
Social media is over and under-rated at the same time.
Social Media is overrated because reach still matters for brands and social media isn't the best way to achieve reach; Because nobody found the magic formula of virality yet; Because social media isn't a massive collective force but a variety of more or less small tribes. Even if there are links between all the entities of social media, they are hard to identify and to activate; Because it's difficult to measure its return; Because collective intelligence is sometimes collective dumbness (cf starwars kid); Because the head is more consistent than the tail; Because it has a scalability problem; Because most of the social media users have no (net)working class consciousness.
Social Media is underrated because social media changes the way we expect to use (any kind of) media; Because it's an incredible accelerator; Because you can achieve great results with low budgets; Because every study show that word of mouth is by far the biggest sales driver; Because it's the ultimate market intelligence tool; Because it raises engagement; Because it allows viral mechanisms on top/as a part of your display campaigns; Because that's where your target group is and because that's where you can talk with him...
As we speak, your brand can still survive without using the power of social media. Many brands advertise and communicate like they used to do 10 years ago. Not all of them are on the verge of bankrupcy. Nevertheless, as a brand, ignoring new media prevent you to maximize your marketing efficiency.
/Link to original post