I hear it all the time: companies are scared of social media due to the ‘lack of control’ the medium presents. Whether they realize it or not, what the companies and brand managers are actually scared of is the responsibility that comes with knowing what their consumers have to say about their brands.
Lets be real. It’s not like consumers weren’t talking about brands before social media, or even before the digital era. Oh, they were talking. Brands just couldn’t hear, monitor or respond to the word-of-mouth that was going on like they can today.
As social media puts the consumers in control, it also presents a huge opportunity for brands to connect with those consumers on a personal level. Social media doesn’t give brands less control – it offers them a way to blow their consumers away by actually caring and reacting to what they have to say.
So what if a company finds out their product actually sucks?
The fact of the matter is that this shift in the way we communicate is forcing marketers to make truthful claims and awesome products. The nature of social media holds companies accountable for the performance of their brands and product claims. It forces companies to go back to the core values of what they are promoting and be responsible for the quality of what they are marketing. And that is what companies and brand managers are actually scared of.
