Finding a Mutual Purpose

We talk a lot about transparency and relevance in blog writing. It seems obvious to this is a platform where people come to be informed or educated, or to read about varying opinions or perspectives. And it seems just as obvious that self-serving blogging doesn’t work.

A study created by Adam Sarner, an analyst with market research firm Gartner, indicates that more than 75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies will have a social-networking initiative for marketing or customer relations purposes. However  Sarner predicted that 50 percent of those campaigns will be classified as failures because of a disconnect between the goals of the companies and the communities they attempt to serve.

To those of us who are active in Social Media but are not corporate marketing executives, perhaps its easier to understand the path of the relationship between participants. The identity that we build from our profile establishes a reputation through our posting, sharing and commenting which becomes the basis of how we are perceived by other participants in the social arena  – hopefully earning their trust so that when they need our product or service they think of us.

I think that the really smart marketing people who are the core of the Fortune 1000 companies marketing efforts are perhaps to accustomed to focusing on the push type marketing that typifies almost every other type of media exposure companies generate. They are asked to validate their efforts by showing direct response to their campaigns, and new media is not amenable to that type of measurement. Last week I wrote about 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study which indicated in part that 56% of the people surveyed felt a stronger connection to and better served by companies who interacted with them through social media. That’s incredibly valuable to a company, but really difficult to quantify when you’re reporting to your Board of Directors.

Perhaps smaller businesses  who are more entrepreneurial than corporate will continue to be at the forefront of the Social Media world until the large corporations reach some equanimity  with the long tail approach to marketing. Or perhaps they will heed the the study and find that Mutual Purpose balancing the consumer’s desire with their communications.

Tags: Adam Sarner, Business, Customer relationship management, Market research, Marketing, Social Media, Social network service