What’s the impact of your Social Media campaign likely to be – or lack thereof? According to a ten year study completed and published by the PEW Research Center, you could have ignored it back in 2005, but that would be unwise in 2015.
Unlike much of the rest of the Internet activity, Social Media is seen as a form of communication with friends and relatives, rather than part of the lifestyle or hobby activity. People don’t identify talking on Twitter or Facebook with “internet usage” any more than they feel their phone has the same connotations. If a stigma still exists it is thin. What is highly interesting is that there is little change between the demographics normally used to segregate or cause segregation. Race, Sex, Education and Salary show very little in the way of alteration. In fact if I didn’t make sure they were marked I would have had trouble loading them into my post.
There has always been a strong propensity for people to accept the viewpoint or opinion of ‘another fellow’ over the ‘expert’. In the past this leaning held contained for the most part to things like movie reviews and restaurants. People would accept the opinion of a man in the coffee line with them -- who they had never met before and knew nothing about -- over the professional critics when making decisions on whether to see the new Eastwood movie. This activity has extended broadly into news, corporate bias, and political opinions today inside the realms of Social Media. In fact more than 65% of the conversational topic lines inside social media are on these topical points – and is likely in direct response toward the inaccuracy levels of the News Media over the last ten years. Three studies completed in 2014 demonstrated that on the whole, the major News Media was more than 65% inaccurate across the storyboard.
Many companies are finding a backlash problem in this area, which was hidden under the wide open spaces luring them out into the open. With News Releases of the past, most of the potentially devastating mistakes of timing, wording, cultural taboo, foot in mouth or just plain lapse of judgement were neutralized by editors and reporters who discarded poorly thought out releases before they came close to being in the public eye. Now, with Twitter and Facebook, and even Linked In open for the publication of all to all, and the population segments involved, there have been some serious and crippling mistakes injected straight into the Social stream sans saving-throw. One that comes to mind was last year about this time with DiGiorno Pizza, and their injected post into the hashtag area of Twitter #WhyIStayed
While companies great and small have lashed themselves with such mistakes and have now taken the Social Media environment more seriously, hiring professionals instead of getting the new intern to handle the task, even companies as solid as Lego with a USA team of professionals have been caught out and drug out into the Twitter streets and riots. Back in 2005 this was contained by population, and today -- unrestrained by the same.
Cell Phones have been cited as the catalyst of sudden growth into the News and Media areas, but this last study also demonstrated that this is likely not the case at all. While huge segments of the population now own and utilize smart and media phones, they do so in rapid and short glances, rarely spending extended periods of time in News Gathering activity.
So, true content is still King, the story is still the most important aspect of the corporate persona and consistency the unyielding Sgt at Arms.