The buzz for the past year has been all about Social Media, but what has changed? Sure more people have Twitter, companies have Facebook pages and the few of us who use FourSquare are looked upon like freaks to the rest, as well as getting evil stares when logging in at your favourite restaurant.
But what has really happened? Social media has meant brands are spending more and more time documenting things in an online space and then paying for this investment in time by then having to deal with feedback, both positive and negative, from consumers.
What is developing from this is any one of us is able to search a client, see how they operate in terms of responding to customer queries, through twitter hashtags, through HelloPeter and by looking at the Facebook page. Trip Advisor is great for hotels and restaurants and FourSquare can tell you what is happening at a space as it happens. Get Glue lets you log in to your audio and visual experiences, documenting patterns of engagement with media, books, music and the like.
If you can keep up and are invested in PR online then this is a fantastic tool, one which has seen some brands such as @Vodacom develop a more loyal base, despite poor service. Their response to online Tweets is quick, they seem to care. They are still expensive and drop calls, but they answer!
@Woolworths_SA is an example of a very poor presence on Twitter. Tweet them a problem and you won’t hear back. Tweet them you love their ‘family meal for under R150′ and they love you back. Poor.
So how do you handle an online media strategy? Time, dashboards of information and choosing select channels that you can maximise input and output, and a constant re-evaluation of these spaces until you get the mix right.
