I remember my first lecture at university, having enrolled on a marketing course I was sitting in a massive room with around 70 other nervous wrecks and my tutor was attempting to explain how important it is to understand the traditional communication model. One of the few things I can remember from that day is how much he kept repeating that this model was fundamental to marketers. If I was sat in that room today, I would still have been too scared to even move, but my thoughts would have been very different. The internet has changed so much, it has changed the way we buy things, the way we communicate, collaborate, find information, the list goes on and I am sure it will get bigger.
Marketers are not embracing web 2.0 communications. Many might be using them but that doesn’t mean much.
Frankly many marketers read about blogs, Twitter and social networks and then they attempt to jump on a massive bandwagon before they understand what it is and how it works. This is so evident, I have around 5 companies a day attempting to join me on Twitter, they then broadcast stuff that I don’t care about, which then annoys me and gives me a negative view of that company. However, there are many that are leading the way and using Twitter in the right way and oh boy are they receiving kudos from the people above. Free marketing is always appreciated.
The problem is that many marketers have never used any web 2.0 tools in their private lives and then their boss tells them to suddenly start using it to communicate with customers. Writing a blog or creating a group on Facebook that aims to catch people’s attention is extremely hard without any experience. If you think of Facebook (or indeed social networks) as a country, it has a specific culture and a different language and Facebook happens to have a population (users) above the 200 million mark, which would make it the world’s 5th biggest country. My point is that it would be pretty daunting to be chucked into a country of that size and be told to start engaging with the people that live there.
It’s interesting to see Millennials coming in to marketing roles and applying their communication techniques. Because to Millennials all the stuff happening on the net is pervasive, its sometihng they have grown up with, its not something they learn, its just there. This might be the case for many other generations but as digital natives Millennials have already embraced web 2.0 technology and applying it at work is no big deal. If you are thinking about a social media strategy then get the younger workers involved and let them lead the way, because within this area they really have got the experience.
