An outstanding view and review of just who’s in control of branding now – here in “How social media is upending the enterprise” – from the Fast Company newsletter. A provocative title, but really it’s about control.
Here’s the key:
“I believe public conversations about brands will now be distributed in nature, spread across the web into thousands of tiny corners. The challenge for companies is figuring out how to manage this. A conversation could start with a tweet, be directed to a help forum, be responded to in email, updated in a blog post, and then broadcast on Facebook. How will this be tracked, measured and monitored?”
Whether at Yelp (my favorite) or some other review site, marketers need to recognize and accept this “tiny corners” stuff. As search engines (Bing, Google) get better and better, there’s little need for a consumer to rely on checking a single place. The engines find it for them.
If this nation doesn’t find a way to stop the march towards socialism and the attack on our Constitution and free enterprise, controlling a brand will be irrelevant…first things first, starting this coming November…throw them all out, set term limits, control the political contributions of special interests, and curb lobbying once and for all…that’s my story and I am sticking to it…