I think advertisers have to accept that there are limits to advertising on social media sites. As the Economist points out (edition 29 Nov- Dec 5) in a piece on internet trends, people go to social networking sites to socialise not to shop.
The Economist reports that five per cent of online time is now spent at YouTube and Facebook.
There is no escaping the fact that marketing managers have to change the way they operate if they want to engage with consumers using social media sites. The fact of the matter is that consumers are no longer just going to corporate sites. They are going to user generated content sites for news and views.
I have met quite a few apologetic corporate PR managers who say that the culture of the business is conservative and they cannot embrace social media for a variety of reasons. They are living off past successes. The old way of working has served them well. But companies who do not embrace social media will become culturally irrelevant or be outwitted by more nimble and progressive competitors.
And of course so many talented corporate PR/marketing managers cannot even see what is being said about their brands online because the board does not get social media and some reactionary IT executive has put up a firewall which makes it impossible for them to do their jobs properly. How can marketing managers and PR people do their jobs if they cannot participate in social media? How long will this farce continue for? Naturally the clever marketing and PR managers will take more innovative courses of action and there are a lot of them around as well - thank goodness!
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