For the past two summers I was lucky enough to intern for an Alaskan telecommunications company in their marketing department.The most recent summer I noticed a very drastic change in the department as they created a subgroup for a social media marketing. As Safko states in the first chapter of The Social Media Bible, Social Media Marketing needs to be acknowledged and need to be given the opportunity to connect with customers. Someone high up must have read Safko’s book, because within a years time, the company’s facebook and twitter account went from being inactive, to posting comments and responding to customers every few hours, and even has a Instagram account that they post pictures on weekly. By being active, and communicating within the community they have created positive relations with customers, and their outreach in the community is growing everyday.
I personally hope that more company’s follow these footsteps and interact with their customers, because it will not only show the community that company’s care, but it can also prevent unnecessary crises in the future. Here’s a helpful article I found that explains how a social media crisis can be handled.
Now, moving towards a different yet similar topic, I think that social media will be able to promote individuals as we use social media for a more personal reason. I think that if we use social media as a respectful representation of ourselves, it will be a powerful platform to essentially market us. We can use twitter, and blogs to create an online presence and use that to connect with an audience all of whom have similar interests as we do. By creating this presence we are given so many opportunities than ever before, such as being offered our dream jobs, being able to influence hundreds of people, or by being able to make a friend. I hope that from creating this blog I will be able to obtain one of these. I hope to continue my online presence, whether it be this blog, or maybe another blog I create in the future (which will most likely be about food) so that I can lucky enough to broaden my horizon.
Amelia Neumann 