A friend recently explained to me that since the advent of Facebook her wardrobe budget had shot through the roof.  “I simply can’t be tagged wearing the same clothes all the time!”

Key learning? Social media is starting to shape the decisions we make.

From product reviews on YouTube, to branded iPhone apps, marketers are prescribing social media as the cure for switched off audiences. This is made apparent in David Siteman Garland’s 10 Big Marketing Predictions For 2010. Over half of his predictions, based on interviews with marketing professionals, involve the use of social media in one form or another.

It is too easy to get caught up in the buzz and jump on the social media bandwagon just because everyone else is. However, merely having an online presence is not enough.  Consumers don’t care that you’re online. It is how you interact with them that adds value to your brand. The technology is simply the vehicle, not the destination.

At Latitude Insights, we use social media to help build relationships, but we don’t expect the technology to do it for us. Our communities are just as much about members as they are about research. This is because the richest conversations come from members feeling engaged.

So, whatever your online activities are, think about what your consumers are getting out of it. Always remember that…

“Social media and networks are powerful mediums, but only as good as the humans who use them”

-Brent Leary, Business Technology Analyst

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 3:53 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.