In evaluating Social Media’s potential for your marketing efforts, I think it is important that a marketer understand the overall power that social media possesses. Once something gains momentum in the world of social media, it can be unstoppable. As a marketer you want to be on the proactive side of that equation versus trying to reactively fight your way out of mess. I’ll use two separate topics in this post to highlight the topic of social media and power: consumer vigilantes and communism.

Consumer Vigilantes

We have all been on the phone, frustrated and tired, with the customer support divisions of large companies. Whether trying to get the power turned back on or cable TV installed to correcting an error in our mortgage escrow account, the maze of phone menus, overseas based customer service gaps, and general lack of flexibility from big companies can leave you can feeling angry and helpless.

In the March 3rd 2008 edition of Business Week, they published an article titled “Consumer Vigilantes“. It highlighted several stories of customer service frustration including the infamous one where a 76 year old woman returned to a Comcast office after waiting for 2 1/2 hours to speak to a manager and used a hammer to smash the computer keyboard of an employee. In addition to being arrested, the incident earned the retiree notoriety as Mona “The Hammer” Shaw.

In my opinion as a consumer, the hammer incident itself generated a very poor result in terms of what Mona Shaw intended to do which was get attention from the cable giant and get results for her issue. As a marketer, I will admit that the media attention did promote her story to phenomenal levels. Still, was media distribution really worth going to jail for? In comparison to the approach that Advertising Age columnist Bob Garfield took which was to bring up a blog dedicated to customer service issues with Comcast, I’d have to say NO–it wasn’t worth going to jail for. Needless to say, Bob’s blog has has taken off to the point of where it has marked a place in blogosphere history. It’s name? Simple. . .ComCast Must Die!

Others are taking different approaches. One is simply recording these 2, 3, 4, or more customer service calls where you get the same run around with nothing getting solved and uploading it to YouTube for all the world to hear!

The bottom line is that when something takes off in the world of social media, it hits the Internet with force and companies are taking note. As a marketer, you want to be in front of that curve. Likely you want to be proactive and engaged with the Internet at all times. This can range from setting up Google Alerts to simply working with Bloggers. Starbucks does this with the site Starbucks Gossip.

Communism and Bloggers

Whether it be progress in Cuba or China’s stance on Tibetan Monks, blogs are presenting a major challenge for communist governments. CBS News published a story on the uprising of bloggers in Cuba. I definitely don’t want to go into a debate on specific issues in the communist world on this post but I will ask you to compare the return on investment potential of blogging coming out of Cuba coupled with those targeted to reach Cuban audiences when compared to strategies such as TV Marti where the U.S. government has invested 1/2 of a billion dollars in media that is estimated to only reach 1/3 of one percent of the Cuban population.

Conclusion

Social Media is power and the potential is growing. This blog is dedicated to information and thinking that can help marketers to be successful versus scrambling to deal with the Internet. How would you like to go in front of the US Senate to discuss your TV Marti results and not have a social media strategy in place?

Derick Schaefer