Accession Media

So in my last post I pointed out a nice example of a corporate blog I came across. These days corporate blogs are a dime a dozen - old news (but still effective internet marketing tools). Now the “web 2.0″ thing to do is Twitter. I know…I can’t take it either.

Twitter is a tool whose functionality is somewhere between blogging and instant messaging. It’s the ultimate in fast (short) and easy communication between you and thousands of your friends. And once you have a group of people talking together, they are sure to start bitching about the products and services that they come into contact with in their daily lives. The smart companies are now joining the conversation.

I was able to find the following Twitter profiles that represent large, well known corporations..

• Zappos - online shoe retailer
• Southwest Airlines
• Comcast Cable
• JetBlue
• Delta Airlines
• General Motors
• Dell Computer
• Carnival Cruise Lines

If you dig into some of the conversation strings linked above you’ll see that these firms are doing three main things with Twitter…

• Promoting products and services to the Twitter community
• Reacting to negative customer situations in a friendly, personal, and helpful voice - if not with a solution, then at least with a sympathetic ear
• Proactively interacting with customers to improve their products/services, or avoid situations that will ultimately require them to react to negativity

I have to admit that I’m a bit of a newbie to Twitter, and at first I had no clue what was going on or why it was worth my time to participate. However, as more and more of my friends and business associates started Twittering, the more interesting and fun it became. In just the past few months Twitter has “crossed the chasm” - gotten past the “tipping point” - gotten through “the dip” - or whatever business B.S. phrase you want to use to say that it is being widely, adopted by many, and business is getting on board the train.

Back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, every marketer wanted a website for their company/product/service. The website would be the silver bullet that would kick-start their marketing and open their business up to massive international markets. They built their sites and ignored them. Mission accomplished!

By the mid-1990’s some of them were noticing that their websites were static and useless cost centers - unless they were going to put in the time and effort to get some honest to goodness consumer friendly content onto them on a regular basis. That thinking is now taken for granted.

In the past 3 to 5 years the revelation that if your site can’t be found in the major search engines it could have a massive impact on your business has also come to fore of the average marketers mind. Now when sites are built or rebuilt, the fact that they need to be “search engine optimized” has ALMOST reached the point of being taken for granted. Most developers and agencies have finally realized what a critical piece of the pie SEO is and it is included in projects as a matter of course…for the most part.

Next up was blogging. Every marketer keeping up with the latest buzz words knew they wanted a blog, but they weren’t sure why. Now every news site worth its weight has a blog, and several blog-only “media networks” have sprung up and are experiencing some success with advertisers.

So what’s next? Social media of course! This WebProNews article (thanks TJF) by Matt Bailey encapsulates the current thinking on social media like no other I’ve read to date. Every time the new buzzword comes about, marketers see it as an “easy” way to get traffic, get recognized, etc. Nothing is easy - just new/different. Just as blogging well takes time, effort and work - participating well in online social sites takes time and effort too.

The key here is that in order to benefit from social sites you actually have to PARTICIPATE, and not just attempt to play your TV or radio spot in the social environment. It’s not a broadcast medium (just like the rest of the web). You actually have to take the time to become part of a community and give more to it than you actually take. I’m just not sure marketers will ever truly get this concept. Come to think of it - doesn’t this lack of understanding finally make marketing as a “department” or “function” within a company pretty much obsolete? Is it time for a new “department” or “function” to be the voice of the product/service inside of the corporation? Or is that the point really - the voice of the customer is the only one that matters and the voice of the product/service have just been talking to itself for quite some time now…

Regardless - why, it has been many years since the Cluetrain Manifesto was written, yet most marketers STILL don’t get it?