Signalfire: Interactive Marketing Solutions

What Will Replace Facebook and Twitter?

It’s a guarantee. Something will replace Facebook. Twitter will go the way of Friendster. Social media networking will continue to evolve and grow. Are businesses wasting their time with social networking? Absolutely not. No matter what comes out of the evolution, the principles will remain. Consumers and customers want to participate in brands, they need to communicate with their interest communities. Brands and businesses need to listen, make themselves available and take every comment seriously.

Like learning multiplication tables before long division, learning the principles that drive social media is what counts. Businesses need to embrace the communication movement that is well afoot. Interactivity and transparency are no longer buzz terms for corporate responsibility, but are the new standards of brand communication. People in your target audience, your consumer base, your marketplace are now holding brands responsible to these standards of behavior.

“Why would I want to buy from a company who’s CEO is not on Twitter,” one consumer commented. While this comment may easily be construed as a statement of access, it more demonstrates how willing a business is to listen. Yet listening is only the first half of the puzzle.

Listening is the most crucial element to this social media revolution. Regardless of Facebook, Twitter or some other future platform, the most important practice brands must embrace is the practice of listening. Listen to what the consumers and evangelists of your brand are talking about, responding to and looking for. This remarkable insight gives a brand or business the flexibility to see changes in the marketplace, the nimbleness to adjust to trends and the relationship with consumers that fosters long term loyalty.

Simply put—listen and respond.

Responding isn’t reacting. Too often businesses look at marketing as reacting to market trends, competitor-specific situations, or even personal moods. Responding to a market trend and responding to consumer patterns makes sense. Responding is a well-thought plan anticipating the ebbs and tides of market changes while reacting is almost always after the fact, overly emotional or “fast following” a good idea.

Even negative feedback, criticism or a complete PR disaster requires a response and not a reaction. Yet a response does not mean a larger timeframe or a slower action. Equally said, a response doesn’t need to be devoid of passion the way most of us view a reaction. Sometime the best response can be a timely, passionate message delivered in the exact same medium of the event.

For example, earlier this year Domino’s Pizza had a PR disaster unfold on social media. A day (couple days?) later, the CEO put out a video reaction to the clip of employees doing nasty things in a food preparation area. Despite the cool, well modulated, cue card delivered speech written by a team of PR 1.0 experts—it was a reaction. The response should have been delivered within hours, shown the passion and outrage of the CEO and blasted onto the web with the same ferocity as the stomach-churning video. Consumers want to know the brand leaders have the same brand passion as they do.

Listening and responding with passion and authenticity is probably the best lesson social media is giving brands. If Facebook collapsed tomorrow, if Twitter’s Fail Whale remained plastered on their site permanently or if tomorrow’s latest and greatest replaced them all—the lesson will remain. Brands are in the trenches with their consumers and customers. If they don’t interact. If they don’t listen and respond they will fade into the noise of social media’s brand evolution.