A lot of talk and comments have been made about social media and whether marketers can get involved and how. First, i think the answer is yes they can, but not like traditional marketing where they place a message to a targeted or not-so targeted group. They need to become part of the conversation and use it as a focus group and garner feedback. They can monitor negative publicity and converse with brand evangelists.
Widgets, blogs, corporate pages, photos, videos…you name it and it can have impact on your online presence which ultimately leads to brand impact. How it is done leads to whether there is a positive impact or not.
Now to Facebook. They launched flyers which I believed to be similar to the traditional “campus flyers” that were posted in common areas around campus back in the day. They usually were bands, clubs, non-profits, or some sort of campus initiative like disease testing. Facebook raised the ante when they took the idea online and said that these “flyers” could be better targeted online.
I like the idea. I really think it would work well for some companies in a media plan. However, in actuality it doesn’t work, or at least on my page. Lately, all I have received has been Mormon ads about missionaries. Guess what, I’m not Mormon, and there are a lot of other people in Utah that are not as well.
So when it all boils down, it appears that the flyers are a glorified name for display advertising using similar targeting to ad networks. Facebook has thousands of widgets that are great marketing tools, but the flyer program is another “network” that media planners and strategists must consider, but don’t think it’s the holy grail for social media.
