Gonzalez points out that information now spreads through small groups of friends. They blog. They email. They vote things up or down. As a result, the media world is moving faster, changing to a more trust-based environment with more value on transparency. Smart marketers are adjusting as fast as they can.
Aloula urges advertisers not to think of social media marketing scale, for example, in terms of reaching millions of consumers with one message. "The average person on Facebook has 150 friends," says Aloula, "but even if people have only 25 or 30 friends, social media marketing lets you get lots of conversations started within these small circles of friends who strongly influence each other."
And while it's possible to create a negative impression (witness the heavily discussed Motrin mistake, the Skittles home-page confusion issue, or Jeff Jarvis attacking Dell), most failures are simply fizzles rather than attention-getting crashes-and-burns.
In fact, one can make a fair argument that the Jarvis-Dell maelstrom may actually have worked to Dell's benefit. After Jarvis raked the company over the coals for poor customer service, Dell began paying more attention to social media and, by getting into the arena, began shaping the conversations, eventually encouraging people who loved Dell to share their experiences with others.
Aloula grew into social media marketing from Procter & Gamble, where he realized that "brands traditionally spend a lot of time aiming before they launch a campaign because the huge fixed costs give them only one chance to get it right, get it perfect before we throw it out there. There's a 100 percent focus on the prelaunch. But with social media, campaigns are more iterative, more about getting feedback and making changes on the fly. It's a two-way conversation, and we must listen as well as talk."
"The nice thing about social networking is that it's liquid, constantly moving and flowing," says Nir Eyal, CEO of AdNectar, an advertising platform specializing in the integration of branded "virtual items" across social networks. "Unless you really screw up, the market balances itself out. The people who like you and who don't like you both comment. If you add something of value to the user's experience, they'll reward you with overwhelmingly positive comments. Sure, you'll get the occasional bad comment from a lone weirdo with a chip on his shoulder, but other people will discount what he says. People are generally good-hearted, and they are more passionate about saying good things than bad."
"Social marketing should be about building communities of customers, fans, potential customers, and potential fans," explains Kerpen. "Social marketers should work to build relationships with those four groups of people, not try to 'sell them' now. Soliciting feedback, testing new ideas and products, sharing new content, and giveaways are all great marketing tasks on social networks. The way to get great results is to build a community, and provide value for them."
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