Page 157 - Free the Idea Monkey

It gets better: the emergence of social media tracking tools give
researchers and marketers alike a bevy of instant information to
optimize targeting, messaging and new product ideas. If you are a
left-brained innovator, life is good. If you are not taking advantage
of social media, you are missing an opportunity to create and launch
better ideas faster.

We have invested heavily in social media
at our company. We believe in the power
of online communities to help uncover
insights; generate and validate new prod-
ucts, services and business models; and
most important, create the necessary con-
versations that spark a new idea we can
develop and introduce across the globe.

Everything it has done for us, we believe it can do for your orga-
nization as well.

Our research shows that marketers intend to invest more in social
media in the years ahead, but they have yet to allot substantial bud-
gets to it. That isn’t the way to go. And if you fund social applications
only as experiments, you’re unlikely to be able to make an impact.

OWNERSHIP IS FLEETING
The purpose with this chapter is twofold.
First, let’s clarify exactly what we (and you) should be talking

about when using the term “social media,” and then we will address
the three biggest worries about implementing it:

• the loss of control,
• the related concern that someone in your employ will make

a mistake during real-time interactions with customers, and
perhaps the biggest misconception of all,
• that there is no way to measure its impact.
Simple definition first: social media are a technically enhanced
—think Internet and mobile-based—way of discussing ideas with
people in communities. (Twitter, blogs, both niche communities
and giant communities like LinkedIn and Facebook are the sorts

142 S O C I A L M E D I A : N O W A N D F O R E V E R