Using Social Media in your company - will that be rewarded?

What is Social Media? Social Media is like the old word of mouth concept. Studies show that the effectiveness of using word- of- mouth is huge. Word- of- mouth converts a sale order of magnitude more than paid advertising. You can even say that social media represents a source of competitive advantage.

Is social media “old wine on new bottles”?

The difference from word-of-mouth only is the use of digital technology and advanced analytics, companies can create a one-on-one relationship with every consumer. The more intimate the relationship, the more indispensible social media becomes. The digitization and herby the use of social media has its implications on the company people and culture, as it creates new relationships and interactions with your costumers, and your brand/products will get an awareness which in positive and negative way have not been seen before. As you get closer to your costumers, you need to be aware that you can’t, hide good as well as bad things for the costumers. The real time comments from costumers about products and services characteristics can be both helping and terrifying  for the company in, their us of figuring out how to best join in the discussion on social media.

P&G uses comments about their brands, which allows them to have knowledge of what is going on in the marketplace. Highly regulated products, with a challenge mission statement towards their target group, can have an extremely good outcome of using social media. These “troubled products” can by listening to what is going on in blogs and tweets creating forums and universes where their costumers can talk about products and the usability of the products.

Where is the reward?

According to a number of big companies in the FMCG sector the use of Social media and advanced analytics is:

• Better innovation
• Higher productivity
• Lower costs
• A promise of higher growth

This should be the outcome of having a closer dialog with your costumers and listen to their concerns and use of products and services. Social Media has a powerful impact on the entire structure of the companies.