Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Social Media Business and the Future

Today I wanted to talk about social media and the future.  A friend of mine, Geoff said the other day, "you know you can learn a lot about a person by following them on Facebook".   I agreed with him and went on to tell him a few stories about how Facebook has changed my life and the lives of millions of others.Today we hear the news and see the weird stories that the news provides including, a killing here, a break in there or a fire or accident.  News reported like its always reported.

On the other had you go to you network and you see that that life is progressing pretty naturally.  Parents passing on, children being born, vacations, and people just doing day to day things.  Its pretty reassuring really.  I have found out more about what people do and how they do it than having long chats with them over coffee or some other libation.  So what gives?

Social media is just what it says it is.  Social and its your channel on the world.  In Canada we are pretty lucky, life goes on from day to day without too much confusion and without too many issues.  World-wide however there is still the problem of one religious group and or group of terrorist trying to take over specific countries.  We are very very lucky in this country.

The future of social media is here to stay. I believe that more people just need to be aware of just what it is that makes the world a better place and some day I hope that social media will help do that.

At the moment social media properties are just getting momentum, like Apple stock ( which at one-time I owned at $33.00 and is today over $500 dollars) Face book ( $37.00) will continue to grow. 

The business model that everyone is complaining about was earnings of $2B in the first quarter of 2013.  If that's not performance then tell me what is.  They have some hard costs, low cost of customer acquisition and millions and millions of participants.  Who says social media isn't here to stay.

The next round for companies and organizations is to figure out how to capitalize on this amazing free resource and get a seat at the table and we think our mission is to help clients figure that out, learn the skills and grow old gracefully integrating new and traditional media. 

Television and radio has still has not figured it out and is sitting on the sidelines thinking they are doing something, but rather than progressively market and gain viewers through multiple integrations, Bell Media and Global in this country cut programs, take unique personalities off the air and discard audiences like match sticks and then complain when viewership is down.

Social media on the other had has used an attraction marketing strategy and made their mediums more interactive, user friendly and participatory and this means a whole lot of individual participation.

For the customer this is the future, for companies selling products, you need to get it together and for traditional medias trimming all the things that made them great, good luck with that, you will continue to lose viewers, listeners and money.  The model is changing and its time to get on board.

So the future is bright and like that song, the future is so bright I need to wear shades, social media will become an integral part of our business environment ( as it already is) and will continue to grow. The time to embrace it is now.