Become a Social Business – Lessons for Marketing (and the whole company)

They’re trying to integrate social media into their old ‘marketing mix’ rather than understanding the whole purpose of social media.

They’re missing the point by throwing out one-way marketing messages like before, screaming things like ‘Buy This’ and ‘Get your 20 per cent discount today! …

This traditional, one-way marketing doesn’t work anymore. Consumers are already bombarded with thousands of marketing messages on a daily basis but the majority of them are ignored. …

Today, we are all connected. Today, smart brands make business personal. And they do that by becoming a social business rather than applying the same old marketing techniques to the new medium of social media. They realize that ‘social’ isn’t a new way of marketing, It’s a new way of doing business.

A social business doesn’t just do social, it uses strategic and creative excellence, and extraordinarily well thought through content to create brand lust, engagement heat and ultimately passionate advocates for the business and it’s products and services.

…You see – it’s not just about ‘going social’. It’s about becoming a social business. It’s realizing that marketing doesn’t work like it used to. Today, successful brands become social ones.

This is an outstanding summary how a company – and in particular its Marketing department – needs to understand Social Media and Social Business. How often do I get approached with people asking me to tweet about this event and that promo. I usually simply refuse to do so in my personal social channels and I try to limit it in my brand channels (although the pressure is often to high to completely avoid it). Social Business is about personal relations, quality content, two way communication and interaction, trust and transparency.