I truly believe that social media is underused by many major
brands and companies. One of the
biggest draws to a brand for me personally, is transparency. I don’t want your corporation to be
some mysterious place where I buy goods and don’t know where they come from or
what your company is all about.
Obviously before social media we had ads that were capable of
“deceiving” us into making decisions.
Now, we live in a world where any sort of deception can be easily
uncovered. So what does this mean
for brands? To me, it means show
me what you’re all about. That's where social media comes in. The
beauty of social media is that you can do this for free, using Facebook,
Twitter, Vine, Instagram, YouTube, even Tumblr, a brand can be almost like a
friend to consumers.
It’s because of this transparency that social media provides
that I think more brands need to use it to survive and build a
consumer base. Take Chipotle for
example. I recently watched the
new Chipotle ad, which by the way is not streaming on television. It blew me away, so I decided to tweet
at Chipotle about it. I got a
response from them in about 20 minutes.
I didn’t follow Chipotle before this, but now I do because they have
brand representatives on their Twitter feed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,
responding to the tweets of Chipotle customers. That is brand management.
Another major part of brand management is engagement from
the top tier of the company.
According to a report by CEO.com, 68% of Fortune 500 CEO’s are not
present on any social network. To
me, this seems detrimental to the brand, although potentially redeemable by how active the Twitter of the brand is. Let’s continue
with the Chipotle example. Steve
Ells, the founder of Chipotle does not have a Twitter. The Chipotle Twitter will tweet about Steve, but Steve himself does not tweet.
Does this take away from the Chipotle brand? Maybe not in this case because the Twitter is already so
engaged, but it’s still questionable.
I think this shows that engagement on social media isn’t tied to the CEO
being present, but it certainly can’t hurt.
Overall, I think social media needs to be used by all
brands, big or small. Sometimes
that means you can get to millions of followers and sometimes you won’t. What’s most important is to be engaged
with your followers-it’s how you gain more. I’m an example of that. And while Chipotle isn’t my favorite restaurant, they managed
to get me to engage with them and that is a successful use of social media.
Check out my Vine about brands and social media: https://vine.co/v/hwWlW6iOQtF
Check out my Vine about brands and social media: https://vine.co/v/hwWlW6iOQtF
