How To Split An Atom

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I had the pleasure of having a conversation with Michael Brito, a Social Media evangelist at Intel. What we talked about was whether Social Media is just a marketers play thing or whether it has wider implications for mainstream consumers. The core of the question was, “What is the true power of Social Media?”

He was kind enough to summarize some of these thoughts into a post, take a look at what he had to say.

Traditional Marketers, Brand Managers

In my experience, many traditional marketers are afraid of social media because they don’t want to lose control of the message. Their idea of a true “conversation” scares them to death. They would rather continue with their multi-million dollar banner campaigns, white papers and press releases and bombard the Internet with one-way marketing messages. In my experience at HP driving social media strategy across the organization, one of the first tactical approaches I took was to launch a product related blog. Many of the internal “traditional” marketers were literally freaking out of the idea that a blog would be actually open for users to leave comments. Imagine that?

The Main-Stream Consumer

Blogs are slowly becoming main stream to consumers; and we all know that Facebook is exploding. The result is the creation of what I refer to as micro-communities. Even for the mom who just launched a blog about her baby, she still has a small circle of influence; even if it’s just her immediate family. This is a micro-community and they are talking.

The “Power of Social Media” might not ever be fully understood by the mainstream consumer; the same way the “strong ROI from paid search” won’t be either. The TRUE “Power of Social Media” exists when marketers understand that conversations are just as important as conversions. And, when they find that perfect opportunity to join the conversation, build/nurture a community, and essentially create loyal brand advocates, then they will truly feel the power. Dell’s IdeaStorm community is the best example I can think of where a company is engaging in an ongoing, organic conversation. They are listening and acting too!

My point is simply that the core of Social Media is embedded in the conversations between marketers and consumers. It’s organic, participatory and can prove to be great mechanism to gather feedback about your product/service. It’s about cultivating long-term relationships and empowerment. It’s a two-way dialogue, with no room for marketing fluff. It’s about acknowledging and listening and creating a sense of community, and not an audience

Bio: Michael Brito is a social media evangelist for Intel Corporation; and also authors a blog that discusses conversational marketing and social media.

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