Social Media of 2009 – Keep An Open Mind

I am always try to browse 123 Social Media and there was a great post by Barry Hurd called Social Media Benefits – Marketing Comes With a Warning Label. In the post Barry talks about the disconnect between Customer Engagement and Customer Service in the graph shown on this page. There is also a huge dissconnect between business owners and the use of social media marketing.

The entire graph makes a lot of sense except for the bottom of the graph where Customer Service is listed at 17.5%.

We could go into an entire post about the benefits of Social Media to customer service but I wanted to focus on what Barry was talking about in his post.

The Concept of Having An Open Mind with Social Media

As you can tell by the graph, customer engagement is the top reason why Marketing Executives would use Social Media Marketing. I have been preaching this ever since I started my blog. Social Media is very much a “brand development” tool for small business. It is hard to use Social Media for lead generation sources (though it is starting to shift towards the positive on this subject).

As we enter 2009, marketers of all shapes and sizes need to be more open to the idea of adding an element of social media into their marketing mix. With the Internet growing and sites like Facebook and Myspace churning millions upon millions of people daily, it is the time to start focusing on using this medium of promotion.

So why is it hard for marketers to have an open mind about social media?

It isn’t fully explained!

Marketers and Social Media Mavens need to work together in order to focus on a workable model for ROI and brand development on the Internet. Both parties need an open mind to work together in order to keep the “Integrity” of the tool while building a tangible benefit.