Chapters 9 and 10 help to illustrate the ways in which companies can embrace the groundswell movement in order to accomplish their five primary corporate objectives of listening, talking, energizing, supporting and embracing. The chapters outline the ways in which companies have begun to rely on close relationships with their customers and feedback campaigns in order to yield a better sense of what customers want and look for out of their favorite brands. 
This phenomenon has signaled an important shift in media, marketing and branding. Similar to the way that other industries such as news media and journalism have been transformed by social media, marketing and branding is no longer conducted by elite professionals and fancy firms. Social media has transformed branding and marketing to be oriented around 'grassroots' level engagement of the consumer base, while in the past may have been more of a top down approach in so far as executives and marketing professionals made the calls about advertising and product decisions. |
| Twitter has also emerged for news media delivery |
The "democratizing innovation" is the new reality for companies and the playing field has become more equalized; any consumer that utilizes social media has significance to companies and brands. The comments and posts by individuals can amount to replies and actions from companies, even drive their future decision-making. Not only has this transformed what companies decide to do but it has also effected how. Democratizing innovation also allows for faster development as companies no longer have lengthy research or testing phases of their products. In contrast, many brands have used social media and digital platforms to seek responses and suggestions from their consumers as demonstrated by the Credit Mutuel and Del Monte examples.
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| This screenshot demonstrates customer service capabilities on Twitter |
Twitter may be the social media platform that allows for the most direct influence of consumers. the structure of the platform allows for quick and easy yet influential dialogues between consumers and brands. The features such as hashtags. tagging and direct messaging help to facilitate a simple exchange. In addition, the linear and sequential nature of the platform helps to make sure that a user scrolling through their timeline never misses a post from the accounts they follow.
Twitter has made changes recently in order to better facilitate these interactions between users. More specifically, Twitter has created a customer service tool for brands. These two new features are a Tweets to Direct Message feature which call to action button will be added for when businesses and customers want to transition to a private conversation and the Customer Feedback feature which enables people to privately share their opinions with a business after a service interaction. With these new added features Twitter will only assist companies in continuing to embrace the groundswell movement and to further develop their energizing component of the five corporate objectives.
Hi Natalie, I am just beginning to feel my way through twitter as part of my research for our social media monitoring. It was this chapter and the points you made above that helped me decide that watching a company on twitter, what people are saying about it and being able to quickly chime in if I feel like it was the deciding factor. I will have to let you know how my own twittering goes as I work on this medium. Do you twitter? how do you like it? Does it get annoying? Thanks for this post!
ReplyDeleteI do agree that marketing has become more grassroots, and the approach of many brands is to speak directly to consumers through social media. I do not have a Twitter account so I do not know much about what is new with it, but if Twitter created a Customer Service button that allows brands to privately speak with an individual, this is real progression of social media can offer and add to customer service. I like that social media is allowing people more options and ways of doing things.
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