Social Media: Tools and Strategy for the new business
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Link title: Social Media: Tools and Strategy for the new business
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Overview of Social media
Social media seems to be one of the hottest term on the Internet today. It is spoken, written as a new marketing strategy for firms and corporations besides the traditional marketing methods. The term consists of two words: social and media. "Social" project an image of people talking, sharing and mingling with each other about anything in the world. It's all about interaction with each other. Socializing is an important part of our human life. We feel sympathy, happy when socializing with other people. "Media" refers to communication tools such as newspapers, magazines, television, radio. While the term "social" is about interaction between people and people, the term media conjure an image of how the story is delivered. Social media, then, is coined a term which mentions about the ability of people who knows how to control the web communication tools to publish, share and engage in conversations about anything in the world.
In the past, people are unlikely to become a publisher if they don't graduate with a degree related to communication or other fields. They also need a large money invested in machines such as printers, studios and cameras to become a publisher. However, it changes 180 degrees today. People, range from ages to occupations, are relying on publication tools made available on the Internet to become a publisher. They use blogs to share news, articles, tutorials to thousands, even millions of users a day. Video sharing sites such as Youtube, Vimeo, Veoh make it possible for people to make a video blog, for example. People also subscribe from others blog, video channels and so on. It creates numerous conversations which are continuously discussed by active net users.
Therefore, not mentioning about the journalism side of social media but on the business side of social media, strategy to success is influence those conversations that benefits the best to business. Business owners could not change the fact about their products, services nor they could not control what people are saying about their company in the social media world because people are freely joining conversations. However, they could influence it. By understanding the strategic of social media, business could use numerous social media tools to generate more benefits to their corporation.
The differences between social media, web 2.0 and social networking
It's maybe confusing for people to distinguish the differences between these three terms because they seems are born at the same time. However, there is a clear differences between them. Web 2.0 was first mentioned in the meeting of O'Reilly media. Web 2.0 refers to the new generation of websites in which characterized by these characteristics:
1. The web as a platform
2. Harness collective Intelligence
3. Data is very important
4. No more software recycling cycle
5. Lightweight programming models
6. Software above a single devices
Overall, web 2.0 is more about technology than how people enable conversations throughout the world by joining social media.
It's also interesting to note that social media is also different than social networking. The fact is social networking is about the relationship between people and people. When users join social networking sites such as Linkedin, Facebook, and other sites, they are enabling and harnessing the relationship between them and those people who they are interested. Hence, social media is also different than social networking.
The two sides of social media
1. The Ugly side of Social media
Social media may not work well for some people. In this case, Heinz and Pepto-Bismol corporation should be given credits for trying new social media method which was intended to boost sale and company's image. Heinz Ketchup and Pepto-Bismol both sponsored a video contest in which allowed non-professional people make a short film about their products: ketchup and diarrhea medicine. However, the result of the contest did not happen as they want. Some users made films in which their products were in a position of being ridiculed. Both companies decided to let go alone the reward and never mentioned that contest in their homepage.
However, that was not bad. At least Heinz and Pepto-Bismol did not need to pay a large amount of money. Kryptonite, a bicycle lock manufacturer, paid over 5 millions dollars for a design defective in their locks, which was caused by a spreading of a video about how people could easily deactivate their locks.
Those are the typical examples of how bad the situation would be if you don't know the strategy in social media and some tools to get into it. Next, the Good side of Social media would be discussed.
2. The Good side of Social media
Fortunately, social media is not totally bad. Some manufacturers, such as Dell, take advantages of enabling conversations between manufacturers and customers so well that it has benefited from social media 1 million dollars in sale revenue. Account of Dell at Twitter, @delloutlet, publishs news about company's outlet sale, sale blow out which attracts lots of people follow its Twitter account to get hot deals. I also see some other businesses has account on Twitter such as Bestbuy, CircuitCity and others. This is a very good new because those businesses have used social media to generate more revenue.
Strategy for business success in social media
Do a lot of social networking
- Build relationship with customers, vendors,...
- Do not focus on making the money, rather focus on strong relationship
- Some business would realize the power of social networking when building relationship because relationship often leads to opportunities or business transactions.
Be truthful, trustful
- No thing more than a corporation who is truthful to consumers.
- Remember that the social media is all about conversation, thus when users find out that you are lying about your services, products, they would against you really quickly and you could feel the destructive feeling in just about one or two weeks.
Don't control, but influence
Tools
Business networking tools
Linkedin
Facebook
MySpace
Ning
Orkut
Publishing tools
Wordpress
Blogger
Typepad
Photo sharing tools
Flickr
Photobucket
Picasa
Videos
Google Video
YouTube
Hulu
Microblogging
Twitter
References
1. Safko, Brake. The Social Media Bible - Tactics, tools and strategies for business success. Wiley 2008
2. O'Reilly. What is Web 2.0. Website