The great turning part of social media, though difficult to pinpoint, clearly started with youthful vigour. Building relationships through a cyber wonderland, yet maintaining a youthful joie de vivre. It was a frontier world of cyber rights and wrongs, at least of a cyber generation and for the most part without the watchful eye and certainly lacking an overlay of business. Yet as you cut away all the little subtleties it did something that is sorely lacking now; there was engagement. The simple action, albeit in a cyber version, of reaching across the aisle and engaging in conversation was both sheer brilliance and natural but also something sorely lacking in today’s version.

Of the present social media world, many corners of it appear to be more of endless colonnade of overturned soapboxes for good natured souls and hucksters to sell their wares. Pounding out manufactured, if not simply fixated scripts for the all-mighty but rarely engaging. The failure of many, that will be there undoing is that social media requires honest engagement, an open handshake of improving the lives of your community.

In this manner, social media can be used as the ultimate of business tools, well beyond a simple analysis of your Profit and Loss Statement but to truly bridge gaps with the marketplace and establish your brand.

Yet the pendulum will swing both ways as failure to earnestly care of your client wishes will rear its ugly head and if all you are concerned with is the quick sale, be ready for a long wait. Those who do not honestly engage in conversation or for that matter earnestly care for their communities’ best interest will watch their businesses decline. The present failing of social media is that is in many corners turning into yet another magazine, rife with advertisements and endless photo ops but rarely content that is worthy of intelligent consumer lifting in from the newsstands.

In the strange twist of events, the new business frontier looks a great deal like the old and once again, the importance of being earnest is at the root of success.

John Davies is available on his personal page on Facebook and Twitter.

The once street feel of Facebook has all but disappeared as the frontier days of 2005 where you could sense a pulsing base beat of trends has been replaced with endless applications, multi-tiered selling tactics and rapidly aging population. The sheer volume of groups and pages, of which users have chosen to casually “like” have turned Facebook into a “tire-kicker’s” shopping mall, where they stroll by stores but never pull out the bill-fold and in many cases echo the voyeuristic problems that crippled MySpace. While it boasts a vast membership base, social media campaigns need to be cautioned that it is not an issue of simply running out your product but finding a route for regular interaction within your desired market and equally ensuring you are positioned correctly.

Twitter has its own unique set of concerns but diametrically the opposite of common marketing approaches and in many ways more of a brand awareness tool to facilitate the next step in the selling equation. The portal offers a youthful zeal, with speed of information and in combination with a natural private barrier allows for the building of a brand but in the bite-sized morsel. The hurdle for business to understand is by the sheer size of “followers” your reader is inundated with “tweets” and needs a hook that leads them to content or landing page within a small timeframe. While there are weaknesses to this platform, it offers a tremendous method of pushing information quickly into the market, leading them to your website. Twitter is not an answer on its own but rather an integral component for well-informed businesses to get their message out and begin the marketing cycle.

Shining brightly in the horizon is Tumblr, a subtle star in the Social Media sky. Boasting ease of use and engaging, the fresh faced blogging platform offers users a visual experience and at this stage, has maintained its edge that screams branding opportunity. The youthful energy rolls through Tumblr low and hard and works perfectly in the overall branding experience and needs to be recognized by businesses quickly.

Prepared by J. Davies
©Helix World Media, 2010.
All rights reserved

Though Mr. Zuckerberg noted in a well-crafted statement the social media titan had “missed the mark” with its privacy controls and will be implementing changes to rectify the problem, it comes up far short in understanding the broader implications. Facebook, as he noted, “has evolved from a simple dorm-room project to a global social network connecting millions of people” and to control the flow of personal information might be impossible with commercial traffic.

Facebook, like the former giant of social media, Myspace, now relegated to being a punch line, has grown because of the super connectivity and the web of contacts with like interests. To pull those or at least place roadblocks on the network, starts the deck tumbling downward as it slowly dilutes the affiliations and ultimately business dealings are the coldest of cold calls.

In light of this recent turmoil and given the company is intended on a mega IPO within the next eighteen months, the company will “add privacy controls that are much simpler to use,” Mr. Zuckerberg claimed. While there is still a broad jump between statement and fact as the company say’s it will allow users to turn off third-party services, it quickly has the selling feature of sending out a bulletin on Myspace.  With the latter, it simply does not work and is merely an automated release that the overwhelming majority will ignore.

Regular users have seen this as since the halcyon days of 2005 to the now open door policy, the lack of privacy has gradually eroded the true connectivity to consumer. As the company chipped away at its privacy settings and saw a massive demographics shift it lacked a “cutting edge” and the organic relationship to user or for business, the consumer dissipated. With this lack of privacy, the ability to reach your consumer, without them feeling like they are under the looking glass is impossible, yet with it, new releases have the allure of a flyer at your doorway.

Though the jury is out on whether the company can rebuild its reputation with respects to privacy, there are significant questions ahead for business users. It must find a way to recapture its youthful exuberance that “Tumblr” exudes and the free flow of information the “Twitter” provides.

Yet on the broader horizon lays the message that business entities need to create their own self-sustaining campaign that invigorates customers to not simply enjoy the brand but become the brand. By creating a sense of a digital dialogue, the company not only allows its consumer to feel they are shaping its future but showing loyalty to the needs of core clientele. That reciprocal function sits at the root of a positive social media campaign.

Prepared by J. Davies
©Helix World Media, 2010.
All rights reserved