Using Social Media in a corporation during a financial crisis, will that create competitive advantage?

 

The global crisis which we are in should “jump start” our brain to think “change”. It is not just financial change but change in:

• How we do business?
• How we consume?
• How we communicate?

It is not an easy task, we have to change behaviour, which we have been used to and have considered as fundamentals and essential for our life especially in the western hemisphere. We are facing enormous challenges.

We have to change the way we do business. Today corporate economy has a strong focus on profit maximization in order to satisfy shareholders. This is not a sufficient path to solve tomorrow's challenges there is a need to think differently. Thinking differently is likewise to think out of the box, change habits and taking in themes such as social and environmental responsibility and innovative thinking into the company's way of communicating with its customers.

We have to change the way we consume. The growing population consumption will within a short time span gives us a lack of fossils fuels, lack of clean drinking water and food sources. We have to think and change to green technology for energy consumption, water cleaning and even food production.

We have to change the way we communicate the messages to the population and how we want to secure that our companies can continue to produce sustainable products and service, which is beneficial for business for consumer and for the environment. A communication model, must be chosen.

How do Social Media fit into this quit complex reality facing the entire population on our planet?

A way of getting change is to communicate with people and get a dialog among people. There are several layers of using Social Media, both on a Macro (governmental) and Micro (company) level in economical terms. In today’s challenging world the communication must be more unified which mean that the Micro level economy – our companies -  will have a responsibility to communicate business messages on a more responsible and sustainable way – taking into consideration how our product/services will affect our social and environment behavior. If this should happen in a positive way the companies has to benefit from it and the consumer and state has to benefit as well from this change. To create this change in communication, a number of questions, must be asked  from a company perspective;

• The change, which happens, during a crisis will Social Media in a communication perspective create competitive advantage?
• Taking advantage of social media’s high value and low cost, will that benefit the company in a changed world?
• Could the change to a Social Media infrastructure help the company through a crisis into a new changed world?

To create competitive advantage a company has to do things different from its competitors and secure that it catches the newest trend in the consumer segment the company is working in. First, you should not drop all you other marketing activities just to use social media. You should use Social Media in coherence with your other marketing channels and secure that you start get the collaboration and dialog with your costumers. The strong thing about Social Media is when you get the peer-to-peer dialog up running. if you as company have been able to create a good content of your product and service and have placed in a context where it naturally explains what you can do for the consumer the peer-to-peer conversation will take it on from that and spread the message. In that perspective, your company will have competitive advantage.

The next level you as a company have to consider is even though Social Media create high value for a relative low cost you have to develop the environment for social media to happen and create the dialog and collaboration, and this is not an easy task, it takes time and internal resources to get there. If you have the resources and time, internal in the company, you would have the possibility to benefit from Social Media in a changed world.

There are certainly some benefits to have a social media infrastructure in place before you have a crisis either internal in the company or external in the form of a global financial crisis. It takes time and energy to build a well run and function Social Media infrastructure. A Social Media infrastructure where you have the collaboration with your costumers, and where your company organization, have accepted, the new way of communicating with the costumers. When these two factors, are in position the Social Media can help the company through a crisis, because you get a lot of information from the market and end-user consumers, which will help you take the correct decisions.

It is very easy to say that using Social Media in a corporation in crisis times will crate competitive advantage this will not do for every company. As described above, you have to have certain criteria being present, and you should have a corporation, believing in change to get real competitive advantage. But if you have these criteria’s in place you will benefit from Social Media in a financial crisis as present today.