Social media is a powerful medium for advertisers, particularly the way it allows them to connect with younger demographics.  While many marketers talk about the importance of social media, they fail to grasp its true significance.

“Instead of discussing the profound impact the phenomena is having within businesses, society and brands, the conversation is often focused on setting up a Twitter account or the next ‘viral video’ — tempting eye candy that shifts the attention away from the transformative nature of this emerging form of human communication,” writes Rob Key, CEO of Converseon. “It can be argued that the term ‘social media’ itself is stunting the potential of the very force it is trying to describe and, hence, has outlived its usefulness.”

“A large part of this is the fact that high-level executives still do not understand the significance of social media for the most part. They don’t understand its importance in external uses like media customer care and branding and internal uses like risk management, market research and HR.”

“Social media is driving greater collaboration and forcing organizations to reexamine their business processes so they can be agile enough to react to the real-time social intelligence being infused into the organization,” notes Key. “The primary value of social media doesn’t come from the tactics or the technologies — many of which are transitory — but from infusing its value across the enterprise to drive real and sustainable business advantage. And the examples of its power are tangible.”

“Examples of this include HP, who saved $10 million by using social listening in its customer service, Procter & Gamble noting that InnoCentive initiative is pushing innovation from the outside and IBM launching their famous real-time social intelligence for making a smarter planet.  Indeed, social media gives marketers the immediate feedback on what works and what does not in a way never possible before. It will be key for all companies sometime very soon to infuse these very tactics into their business practices or get left in the dust.”

“This is an opportunity for agencies to help facilitate that transformation by becoming enterprise-wide solutions and helping create fertile environments internally at brands so that social can flourish. For brands to become social organizations, simple outside-in approaches are doomed to fail over time. Indeed, a growing number of organizations are beginning to have conversations about how social can transform organizations, but this is largely still in its infancy,” continued Key. “Language is power. Language isn’t only what we use to communicate; it also determines how we think. In a post-social media world, we look forward to working with others to articulate a new, elevated vocabulary, and concepts that the C-suite can appreciate while giving the concept of ‘social media’ the respect it deserves.”

Source: iMediaConnection