Whether or not you’re a NCAA basketball fan, how can you not notice March Madness? How many of your colleagues pored over their brackets? How many commercials have you seen on television and online? How many headlines have you read? This annual sporting event is not just a basketball tournament, it’s an enormous national media event, and in this age that means it’s a social media event.
Wherever you look, people aren’t just watching the games, they’re watching the games with their smart phone or tablet in hand, posting comments real-time about that last three-pointer or foul, or about the hip/horrendous commercial they just saw for a cool/cringe-worthy product. Which, by the way, they just visited the company’s website to find out more.
What if that’s your company’s commercial being shown? You have to handle the sudden and explosive flood of data pouring in from social networks and websites: the comments (good and bad), the hits to your landing page, the re-tweets and shares.
The point is not that you need to advertise during March Madness, but that no matter what size company you are, you must account for Social. Your customers somewhere are saying something about your company, products, or services on a social channel. They love your product and recommend it to a friend. They had a bad experience with a customer service agent. They wish you would make a new . . .
What this means is that your customers are controlling the conversation, no matter how much marketing and messaging effort you put forth. Part of marketing’s mandate today is to listen on social channels to discover what is being said about their company, and to participate to help shape and steer the social conversation.
To do this, you need a social strategy that guides you on how to align Social with your business goals, listen and respond on social channels, and use the social data you collect to better serve customers, discover ways to innovate, and gain an advantage in the market.
There exists an extensive portfolio of Social tools on the market today to help meet the needs of organizations large and small. Tools to monitor social channels, respond appropriately, and even to collaborate internally on issues and opportunities that pop up via social networks. Cost-effective, cloud-based solutions such as Salesforce and Chatter are being deployed regularly to achieve social success.
But before going further, make sure you have a solid social strategy in place. Because without a smart approach to Social, it can be madness out there—and not just during March.
