On April 26th, Vice President of Social Media at Edelman Digital Michael Brito visited SU to talk to us about the transition from “Social Business to Social Brand.” There’s no surprise that social media is changing how the public receives information. It’s becoming so integrated into everyday life, it’s common for people to give it up for Lent nowadays; I kid you not, several of my friend’s gave Facebook up for Lent this year, and many failed. Because it’s so influential, businesses are rushing to social media’s doorstep to better reach their customers.
The “Social Customer”, as Brito called it, is growing much more influential. Because these various social networking sites allow people to reach a much bigger range of people, the word spreads much faster and wider than ever before. We’ve all experienced this. You’ll see that several friends on Facebook will say how amazing this movie was and how all of you should see it, and before you know it you just have to see this movie. Or someone on twitter will complain about how awful AT&T’s wireless service is, or how unprofessional an employee at JFK airlines is being towards him/ her. These little comments affect you, as a consumer, much more that you realize. Because the public is influencing each other’s product perceptions so much, businesses have to incorporate social media into their business plans in order to reach their customers and achieve success.
What Brito referred to as the “Social Brand”, these businesses and brands are turning to social media to not only connect with customers, but listen and respond to them as well. Brito used an experience from his own life to exemplify this transition to “Social Branding”. He was waiting in the airport to fly to Syracuse and he wondered if his flight would have wireless Internet. He tweeted this question and within a minute, that airline carrier responded asking for his flight number. He gave it to them and a few moments later he knew that his flight would in fact have wireless Internet. Through Twitter, that airline was able to connect with one of it’s customers and build a stronger relationship with him by helping him and answering his question in a very timely fashion.
While it’s important for business to use social media to help their customers, it’s also important to maintain good standings with them so their products or services don’t get trashed. For example, if someone tweets about how awful the Sheraton Hotels’ service is, the Sheraton Hotel could tweet back apologizing for the inconvenience and offering the customer some sort of compensation for the customer’s disproval. This shows that the Sheraton really cares about its customers and is always concerned about how it is performing. Brito made a point that because there is so much noise in the market, it is very important that a brand has multiple communication channels in order to get its message heard. I personally don’t foresee social media going away any time soon. In fact, I only see it growing and becoming more powerful, so the importance of businesses or any product/ service breaking into this medium is massive. Eventually, I feel every business will have at least one social networking account. It’ll no doubt become a norm of the business world.
Brito’s book Smart Business, Social Business will be released in July 2011. I figure I’d might as well do a little plug for the guy; he was interesting to listen to. Follow him: @britopian and visit his website:
