By M. Isi Eromosele

Social media involves a natural, genuine conversation between people about something of mutual interest, a conversation built on the thoughts and experiences of the participants. It is about sharing and arriving at a collective point, often for the purpose of making a better or more-informed choice.

Social media is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into content publishers. It is the shift from a broadcast mechanism to a many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between authors, people and peers.

Examples of social media applications are Google (reference, social networking), Wikipedia (reference), Facebook(social networking), Twitter (social networking) Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing) and Flickr (photo sharing).

From a marketer’s perspective, social media is not an entity in the way that direct mail or TV advertising are, but is rather a collaborative process through which information is created, shared, altered, and destroyed.

Accuracy Of Social Media

Social media uses the collective, the wisdom of the crowd; it is seldom entirely wrong. In fact, more often than not, it is more than reasonably accurate and therefore constitutes a measurable, trackable feedback point with regard to the acceptance and performance of your product or service.

Social media is used effectively through participation and influence, not command and control. The opportunities for participation can lead to influence, influence that helps companies to achieve their business and marketing objectives.

Social media is utilized in the conversations that occur between your customers, conversations that you may not even know about and certainly will not be part of unless you are present and listening.

Choosing not to participate is tantamount to endorsing, by your own absence, the messages that are ultimately formed in social channels. You can choose whether or not your customers will see you on TV. You cannot choose whether or not your customers will see you on the social Web.

They will, because they will put you there. You can only choose whether or not you will join them there. As such, for contemporary brands aiming for long-term success, not participating is not an option.

Social Media and Marketing

The social Web, used correctly, is all about what your community of supporters can do to help you build your business. Keep in mind too that all of your other channels still exist; social media is a complementary extension of all of your other marketing efforts. Social media is, after all, more of a mind-set than a true channel.

To effectively influence an audience on the social web, you first listen to them. Tap it. Learn from it. One of the characteristics of social media is that you can listen to it, measure it and track it over time. You can use what you learn to modify and improve what you offer and in so doing influence the online conversation.

Social media is characterized largely if not completely by the content trail of ratings, reviews, comments, and more that it leaves on the social Web and by the voting processes and related assessments that clearly mark what the crowd thinks of

this content.

So, you do have a measurable pulse that you can use to guide your efforts in near real-time. Listening to and responding to your customers by paying attention to their conversations is a great way to use social media to influence these discussions. But just how do you influence them?

Give them an experience that they will want to talk about positively and then using the resulting conversation to continuously improve. If you follow this approach, over time you will separate yourself from competitors who don’t tap social media and especially from those who opt for shortcuts.

One of the most valuable aspects of social media from a marketer’s perspective is in building and maintaining a feedback loop. It is through this feedback loop and your measurement of it that you can learn where and how to influence the social conversations that are important to you.

Social media plays into the purchase process via the social feedback cycle simply, the feeding back of the post-purchase experiences of current customers into the purchase funnel at the point of consideration for use by potential customers when making a purchase decision.

The Purchase Funnel

In the purchase funnel, there are three stages you move your customers through as you define the pathway along which you move potential customers toward the ultimate goal, the sale. These three stages are awareness, consideration and purchase.

The purchase funnel offers both an insight into why traditional media works so well, and why marketers who rely on traditional media exclusively have difficulties when first thinking through the potential application of social media.

The purchase funnel is a model that characterizes the process that leads from awareness through consideration to purchase as if it existed in a vacuum. It treats your marketing program and in fact your entire business as if it were a closed system.

A more contemporary representation of the purchase funnel incorporates the social Web and accounts for the impact of consumer-generated media during the consideration stage. It is an open model that recycles the experiential data generated by current customers for the benefit of the next wave of shoppers.

The feedback loop that connects the post-purchase conversation back to the purchase funnel is the key to the application of social media.

Impact Of Social Media On The Purchase Funnel

Social media, like any other form of expression that takes its roots in word of mouth, cuts both ways. It can boost viewership and purchase by reinforcing the underlying marketing message just as easily as it weakens intent and the likelihood of successful conversion.

Social media sits at the pinnacle of the current trends in consumer-to-consumer conversation and marketing effort amplification. As you set up your social media program, don’t hesitate to experiment. Don’t be reckless, either: your brand may or may not be your life, but it’s almost certainly your livelihood.

Begin with your business objectives and solid preparation and a current review of your customers’ online media habits. Then, look at the various social media channels you have available.

Find the channels that build on or complement your current efforts or that fill a gap in your current marketing program and start there, building your social media program as you develop your capabilities.

Marketing Promises Operations Delivers

The connection between operations and marketing, between promise and delivery is central to social media. Social media, in the business context is based on the degree to which the actual experience matches the expectation set.

Recent studies have shown that of the estimated 3.5 billion word-of-mouth conversations that occur around the world each day, about 2.3 billion of them, roughly two out of three

make a reference to a brand, product or service.

Word of mouth is increasingly manifesting itself through digital social media, where it spreads both farther and faster. This use of the social Web is increasingly important to marketers.

Look back at the purchase funnel and expand it to include “post-purchase” experiences of the overall marketing process. Social media connects these experiences back to the purchase process in the social feedback cycle.

Social media is effectively the product of operations, given the expectation (the brand or promise) established in Marketing.

The social feedback cycle is set in motion by a post-purchase opinion that forms based on the relationship between the expectations set and the actual performance of the product or service. This opinion drives word-of-mouth and word-of-mouth ultimately feeds back into the purchase funnel in the consideration phase.

Right between awareness and point-of-purchase comes customer-driven social media. It hits hard too: remember, word-of-mouth is considered to be the most trusted source of information.

The social feedback cycle is driven by word-of-mouth, itself driven by the actual post-purchase or trial/sampling experience. It is essential that Operations and Marketing be in sync.

Getting the Operations + Marketing link right is the first step in successfully implementing social media.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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