Social Media Is Officially Important

Twitter and social media | BCBusiness
Social media platforms like Twitter – once flouted as merely an Internet trend – are being recognized for their power and influence in business.

When traditional think tanks like the Conference Board of Canada recommend the use of social media, you know it’s arrived. Of course, corporate Canada will have to learn an entirely new method of operating.

Well, it’s official. Social media is no longer some flash-in-the-pan Internet trend. It’s apparently a powerful tool that companies can use to “grow market share, generate customer loyalty, create brand equity and manage their brand’s reputation.”

This is from the oh-so-stodgy and traditional Conference Board of Canada, which likes to position itself as the analyst and report generator (read: think tank) for Canada’s top business corporations.

As part of its commitment to this new thing called social media, it’s flogging a couple of high-priced reports about social media use, possibilities and how-to’s.

One suggested best practice that caught my eye is that a company should create – I love this – a “cross-functional social media committee.”

Really. Another committee to oversee something that’s supposed to be “social” – as in, sharing and connecting?

Apparently, the Conference Board and its cohorts among Canada’s business elite have been hiding in a hole for the past five years or so – or they simply just don’t get it.

Most of the western world (and, increasingly, the eastern as well) has gone social, and most of Canadian businesses now use social media. In fact, most marketing and communications companies that help these corporations have converted to include social media as part of their services. There’s even an organization of CEOs who use social media.

Customers have been using social media for some time, outing companies who commit bad customer service, are arrogant or just plain stupid. This, says social media guru Mitch Joel, has “forced brands to become (somewhat) social.”

Maybe if they’re becoming somewhat social, they will also adopt the marketing corollary to social media – content. This new marketing method, which emphasizes subtle display of expertise and value over traditional push-marketing techniques such as advertising, aggressive selling and general screaming at prospective customers, is also gaining a rightful place in the marketing world.

For example, what you’re reading right now – this blog post – is an example of both content (it posits a point of view) and social media use (it’s online, and is eminently sharable).

Joel says that this year social is going to “be pushed out of the marketing and communications departments through the entire DNA of a company.”

Perhaps the Conference Board has picked up this zeitgeist and that is why it’s decided to issue a report that it hopes will “push” social through the DNA of a company.

But first, they’ll have to strike a committee. Can’t get more corporate DNA than that.