While these are all great questions to ask of your company concerning new media they are missing some more important considerations like: "Can we play in that space and be transparent and honest about our agenda?", "Do we have the knowledge and expertise to do it right?", "Do we have dedicated staff to keep up with it?" and "What is our real value to be in this space?"
Lets start with transparency shall we? Most companies still think of how they can apply an old school marketing methodology to social networks. They think "how can I bombard my message to this crowd?" They tend to think of it as a way to access a list or segmented group of people, when in fact this is entirely the wrong approach. Most companies simply aren't prepared to enter social networking and also accept the open and honest interaction directly with their customers or fans. They still think they can control the messaging and brand once it is released into the wild. You will hear brand managers saying absurd things like "We need to monitor the forums, blog comments and how our output is shared and spread." Really? Seriously? The fact is that companies need to realize that the internet and specifically social networks just can't be controlled this way and your company makes it painfully apparent to everyone in this space how much you don't get it by acting this way.
The bottom line is if you plan on branding on social networks you need to embrace ALL of the communication that will get created, good, bad, pretty or ugly.
So why would a company want to market on a social network? Do we as Facebook and Myspace users want them there? Are they just in our way and ruining our little club? The answer is yes but on the terms of the members and not the brand. As a frequent on Facebook, blogs and Twitter, I think of brands, consumer products and other corporate placements the same way I would passing someone walking a dog. Sometimes I might think the dog is cute and take a second to acknowledge that to the owner, sometimes I will just walk on by, I may stop and pet the dog if it is really cute or the owner is attractive, I might not even notice the dog at all depending how distracted or focused on other things I am, the dog may be different or rare and prompt me to find out more, it may be dressed in a ridiculous outfit and draw my attention or I might just not care that day no matter what. The point is that it is entirely my choice to interact or not and if you force the issue I will just get annoyed and ignore you. I may even comment and share my opinion with all of my friends about how obnoxious your brand is.
I guess what I am saying is you need to make sure you have a cute or unique dog with an attractive person walking it! :-)
Stay tuned for Part II
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