Page 112 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

Figuring Out Why You Need an SMM Voice

As we write this chapter, the United States, and indeed the entire world, is suffer-
ing from a breakdown in trust. Practically every major corporation is dealing with
a trust issue. In this environment, does it make sense to introduce a new type of
voice into your organization with potentially overlapping responsibilities confus-
ing customers? On the surface, it may not appear so, but it’s actually more impor-
tant than ever. If the last economic downturn has taught us one thing, it’s that
consumers are tired of engaging with large, impersonal brands and often turn
against them on the social web, trusting them less and less. They simply do not
trust big brands as much as they once did. In fact, half of the respondents to a
survey conducted by The Economist magazine said that the last economic crisis
intensified their distrust of big business. The magazine went on to say that the
downturn accelerated the use of social media because people began placing more
value on the recommendations of their friends than they did in big business.
According to the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in business increased to
54 percent from 48 percent the previous year, showing that while trust in busi-
ness is stabilizing, it’s still quite low with nearly half of the American population
not trusting big business. This is just another point on how trust in big business
has not bounced back significantly from the downturn. The stock market gyra-
tions in markets around the world should indicate to everyone that people are
scared and confused.

If you run a business that tries to reach consumers in the social web, this distrust
presents a problem. Those consumers don’t want to listen to you as much. They’d
much rather listen to their friends. This means that they’re not paying attention
to all the advertising that you’re pushing at them and certainly aren’t making
product-purchasing decisions based on it. In fact, many consumers aren’t even
watching TV the way they once did. Compared to the past, they are either fast-
forwarding through most of the advertising or are watching their favorite shows
online via subscription services that may not support advertising. This means that
you have to change your marketing strategy, and because you purchased this
book, you’ve probably already realized that you need to.

It also means that if your consumers trust their friends more than big brands, you
have to behave more like their friends to earn their trust. And at the heart of
becoming more like their friends is developing an SMM voice that’s associated
with a single person in your company through whom you reach out to those con-
sumers. It can’t just be your brand name, your logo, or your witty copy that does
it. It has to be a real person within your company who’s reaching out to your con-
sumers. And that real person can’t be the CEO, either — unless, of course, that
person can truly invest the time to talk to the consumers him- or herself.

96 PART 2 Practicing SMM on the Social Web