Comments on: How to get investors to buy into Social Media http://mycmo.com.au/2010/06/why-this-angel-is-not-investing-in-social-networks/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-this-angel-is-not-investing-in-social-networks Performance Marketing Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:21:55 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Tony Mittelmark http://mycmo.com.au/2010/06/why-this-angel-is-not-investing-in-social-networks/comment-page-1/#comment-34 Tony Mittelmark Mon, 12 Jul 2010 03:02:15 +0000 http://mycmo.com.au/?p=945#comment-34 The key to social media is engagement - this part is obvious. There are so many examples of using social media to better product, engage with fans or customers and even engage with people who have gripe with your specific product or service. I always say "embrace the negative" especially relative to social media because it is quite easy to turn someone around and make them an advocate simply buy allowing their voice to be heard and acknowledged By avoiding this type of environment users or customers think you have something to hide and will normally take the brand bashing to another website forum As far as advertising in a social setting, you have to put your brand in an environment where people can engage with it - last year SKITTLES set up their own twitter feed and this set them up for brand bashing - the mistake is not using social media, the mistake is how it is used and the lack of experience in using it Bottom Line is reality tv, youtube and vertical communities are all the same - they are about enabling the individual and allowing them to participate in main stream media or vertical interests groups and valuing their opinion The businesses that continue to fear the use of social media are the ones that will be left behind - traditional media must embrace its consumers as part of the show and businesses should value the input that customers can provide Even the research budgets of big companies could be completely removed if social media interfaces were employed correctly One of the biggest business models on the internet is disinter-mediation - where consumer and seller are directly connected, removing the normal business layers which add cost and remove convenience - if businesses, especially, do not embrace social interfaces they will simply be disinter-mediated by third parties The key to social media is engagement – this part is obvious. There are so many examples of using social media to better product, engage with fans or customers and even engage with people who have gripe with your specific product or service. I always say “embrace the negative” especially relative to social media because it is quite easy to turn someone around and make them an advocate simply buy allowing their voice to be heard and acknowledged
By avoiding this type of environment users or customers think you have something to hide and will normally take the brand bashing to another website forum

As far as advertising in a social setting, you have to put your brand in an environment where people can engage with it – last year SKITTLES set up their own twitter feed and this set them up for brand bashing – the mistake is not using social media, the mistake is how it is used and the lack of experience in using it

Bottom Line is reality tv, youtube and vertical communities are all the same – they are about enabling the individual and allowing them to participate in main stream media or vertical interests groups and valuing their opinion
The businesses that continue to fear the use of social media are the ones that will be left behind – traditional media must embrace its consumers as part of the show and businesses should value the input that customers can provide
Even the research budgets of big companies could be completely removed if social media interfaces were employed correctly

One of the biggest business models on the internet is disinter-mediation – where consumer and seller are directly connected, removing the normal business layers which add cost and remove convenience – if businesses, especially, do not embrace social interfaces they will simply be disinter-mediated by third parties

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