I met with a major worldwide brand’s marketing department last week and we were discussing social media and the power of it.
They mentioned at the time that they were “heavily involved” with social media and I listened. “Heavily involved” meant having a fan page on facebook and then seeing it grow with 50,000+ fans. They have an online 2.0 community, but only for their US customers.
In my eyes that is far from being “heavily involved” and only just breaking the surface. I explained to them that ranking your success based on the number of fans was like basing the Analytics on your website by the number of hits. It is good for the ego, but it really doesn’t tell you much more than that.
I took a look at the page (and joined it) and saw the wealth of value this fan page had. It had customers asking questions about the products, making comments about what they dislike and debating about what is best and who is the best fan!!! so much value, yet the company have totally missed all of this….
There was also another 500+ groups started up about the brand or its products as well as over 1000 converations a day happening that they were all unaware of. Sorting through the noise to find the value in this is important but easily acheivable.
On top of that, fans are giving each other wrong information and so all of the “traditional” marketing is not making an impact because the fans who post the comments believe more the fans who ANSWERED their comment.
I have a meeting with them this week and have outlined a strategy that will get them “heavily involved” in Social media and actually making use of all this wealth of information that is just waiting to be actioned…..
Lets hope they listen 
Facebook Groups
