Friday, January 4, 2013

Looking into a murky crystal ball - social media


I’m finding myself more and more using the murky crystal ball as a metaphor for trying to peek into the [foreseeable] future – to predict breakout social-media names that might pose some sort of a threat to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. I think for many, particular those who own and/or are responsible for managing the marketing over the social media.


I think what is becoming obvious is the threat to companies that don’t fully commit to using the better known social-media platform and holdout for the next next new thing.

It doesn’t matter if we are running a restaurant, a recruitment company, or a law firm; we have to become good at [using] the platforms our customers are using, our employees are using, and what other people in related sectors are using. For restaurants for example, I think Twitter is probably the best platform positioned to drive traffic to their website and other social channels.  It’s much more timely and good for current events and conversations.

Potential guests are broadcasting their thoughts and crowd-sourcing their dining decisions more than ever before. 
Paul Barron, founder and chief executive of the Miami-based DigitalCoCo agency, which produces the Restaurant Social Media Index says Twitter is getting better at verticals and can potentially become more real-time for restaurants, like chatter boards, feedback systems and maybe even reservations. So restaurant brands are still figuring out how to leverage Twitter to its fullest.

And according to BTC Revolutions, a social-media consultancy restaurateurs are looking at the ratio of followers they have on Twitter versus fans they have on Facebook and see Facebook as the stronger tool to reach their audience when, in most cases, the reality is there are more people ‘Talking About’ or mentioning their brand on Twitter that they can directly reach in real time than they can on Facebook.”



As an example, on Facebook a brand can only “tag” or reply back to someone who has come to the page and left a comment. However, the brand can search Twitter for comments and engage any Twitter poster that has mentioned the brand.

Twitter allows you to have a two-way conversation with anyone, not just those that reach out to you.

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