Why Social Media is Remarkable
Jul 19th, 2010 by David Svet
I spend a lot of time negotiating between two camps of clients — those who want to embrace social media and those who don’t. A lot has been written about the pros and cons for every business sector. The bottom line is it has been around longer than you think and isn’t going away any time soon. But what seems to me to be missing in all of this dialogue is the fact that for social media to work you have to do something remarkable. Without a remarkable act there are no remarks to make. No one pays attention to tweets about absolutely average customer service or any other completely neutral experience. No one blogs about their new cell phone that is just OK. No one pays attention to posts on Facebook about an ordinary meal at an unmemorable restaurant. We engage our social networks with remarkable experiences — good and bad.
That’s the real crux of the issue. Good and bad experiences are a result of your delivery on your brand promise. If you under promise and over deliver you are remarkably good. If you over promise and under deliver you are remarkably bad. It’s as simple as that. Except now you are rewarded or punished in near real time with the opinion spreading like wildfire.
Here’s a simple case in point. The animated movie, Despicable Me, recently opened. A mommy blogger friend took her brood to see it and was unimpressed. She announced that it sucked on Facebook and Twitter. Tracking the fallout was impressive and scary. Within a few minutes she received replies from friends who intended to take their kids to see it but had suddenly changed their minds. They repeated what they heard to their friends and the damage continued to spread. In all, it’s probably a drop in the bucket for the producers. But the several thousand dollars that was lost by one comment happened in a matter of moments across the nation and continued on for several days.
All of this happened from one comment because the pre-release advertising over promised and the final product under delivered. A quick Google search showed that my friend was not alone and the scenario played out similarly all over the country. Had the movie been average they would have said nothing. But it was remarkable, so they made remarks. The remarks weren’t good. That’s not a problem with social media; it’s a problem delivering on your brand promise. Social media is just the messenger.
Photo by Flickr user tanakawho, used under a Creative Commons license. No birds were harmed in its making.
