Sunday, June 24, 2012

Social media is about conversation

One key difference of social media from traditional mass media is that social media is about conversation.  Most people realizes that social media has given voice to everyone who can get on the internet and knows how to post vlog, blog, status update on Facebook and tweet.  What companies often fail to see, however, is that they also have option to respond and engage in conversations with people via social media.

I wanted to share two examples of how companies are engaging in conversation with users.


1. McDonald's 

Isabel M from Toronto asked "Why does your food look different in the advertising than what is in the store?"  In response to this very commonly asked question, McDonald's created its own YouTube answer to reveal how its hamburger photo is taken.  Creating this matter-of-fact video, McDonald's could answer the question that have been used by cynics to attack McDonald's corporate image.






2. Smartcar USA

Clayton Hove tweeted a pejorative message about Smartcar.  It read "Saw a bird had crapped on a Smart Car. Totaled it."  Official Smartcar USA came back with a reply tweet after a couple of days complete with its infographics: "Couldn’t have been one bird, . Sounds more like 4.5 million. (Seriously, we did the math.) ."  As of writing this blog, Smartcar USA response got retweeted 495 times and favorited 264 times.





Social media is about having conversation with your customers.  Don't be missing at the party when your product is mentioned publicly.

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