Once upon a time, businesses had full control over their image and branding, as long as they had enough money to hire people who knew what to do. The mass media made it possible to get their message out to the masses and influence the thoughts of individuals as they sat in the safety of their living rooms.
Today, the advent of social media and the social web has brought about a revolution. For the first time ever, is the individual who has the power to speak and, as Jay Deragon says in the Social Media Today blog, people’s conversations are having a strong influence on the image of a company – for good or for bad.
Jay explains how the conversations of people who have experienced a product or service create a collective impression of that brand – something Hugh MacLeod calls the brand’s ‘Social Marker‘. When your customers, employees, or even providers talk about you in the social media – and yes, they are talking – their conversations have a knock on effect and are able to spread very rapidly. One person tells another who tells another, and suddenly it’s thousands, or even millions, all talking about you!
‘Who are your customers?’ and ‘What do they want?’ have always been two fundamental questions for any business to ask. But now, the focus really has to be on, ‘What are your customers saying about you?’, both because this question has a direct bearing on the real image of your company that’s out there, and also because by listening to your customers, you can answer the first two questions with a deeper insight than ever before!
Like Jay Deragon says, people don’t want to be managed (by media campaigns, websites talking down to them, and all that jazz). They want to be heard! They want to voice their opinion about the companies they deal with and that includes you. People are clamouring for attention all over the Internet – in their blogs, in their YouTube, in their e-mails. You name it!
Want an example of the power of one man and his social network? Take a look at what happened when a client ran into a dumb customer service rep while trying to cancel his AOL internet account and blogged about it. The resulting media circus left such a lasting effect that if you google the words ‘cancel aol‘, three out of the top six results you get refer to this unfortunate incident that happened over a year and a half ago! A big, black and persistent blot on AOL’s Social Marker.
So, have you got your ear to the ground – or rather to the Internet? If not, it’s time to become aware of the conversations that are happening about your business both online and offline. Jay rightly says what we all know – that people are frustrated by unfulfilled promises and old sales and marketing tactics and that they are “speaking out and are managing, creating and influencing markets.”
Can you afford to plug your ears? Or are your company’s actions going to scream, “We heard you” to the collective public out there? The choice you make will probably have a bigger impact on your business’s Social Marker – and consequently on your business itself – than you could ever imagine!
