Social media has continued to attract attention among big fortune companies despite studies showing that Fortune 500 are still lagging behind in optimally utilizing the power of social network platforms like twitter and facebook. One company P&G was spending hugely in its marketing budget, but in 2012, it announced that it was focussing on social media as a cheaper option for its marketing initiative to try and cut down its staggering $10 billion spending on marketing.
Procter & Gamble, although it embraced traditional advertising channels like TV ads, it was critically considering putting more efforts on social media in order to gain advantage of the increased efficiency of reaching its consumers on the web. The announcement by P&G came at a time when it said that it planned to layoff close to 5,700 staff including marketing personnel in order to cut its spending.
However, the big question is; should P&G really end the careers of many employees at a time when the economy has badly hit many consumers who are now recovering from the global crisis that hit the world economy in 2007? Social media including twitter, facebook, YouTube, Pinterest and LinkedIn have showed that they can tap the huge clientele base found on the internet only if they are integrated in the right manner in companies’ marketing campaigns.
To add on this, companies also need not view social media as only a marketing tool but rather a consumer engagement platform where people can discuss about real life issues and how they affect their relations with businesses. Following the entry of P&G and other big companies like Coca-Cola and Heineken in social media marketing, many other big brand have fallen suit and are not using social networks to reach out to their audiences.
However, statistics still show that there is little progress in the way big companies are using or tapping the benefits of social media. According to a presentation by the University of Massachussetts on annual survey of the digital presence of Fortune 500 that was done at the end on 2012, it revealed that about 1 out of 4 fortune 500 companies were actually ignoring the use of twitter in their social media platforms.
The study showed that about 28 percent of the big (fortune 500 companies) had active blogs and 62 percent has YouTube accounts. However, the same study revealed shocking information that hinted an incredible 23 percent of the big companies actually had no facebook or twitter accounts, and this was as at end of 2012. It is surprising to notice that such big companies were still reluctant in tapping the huge potential put across by the cheap and efficient social media channels in marketing their brands.
This trend was further elaborated by the 2012 fortune 500 social CEO index report, which showed that only about 19 Chief Marketing Officers- CMOs of the big companies were using twitter.com and a vast majority of those accounts were inactive with only 9 of them being cited as the most active twitter accounts. What this means is that there is still much to be done by the big companies in integrating the use of social media to engage consumers actively.
Even as big companies like Coca Cola and P&G are set to increase their social media spending, there is more than just the figures. The community needs to be actively engaged in the most holistic manner to help create brand name awareness and record more sharing of brand features. And, this is something that can be achieved through using twitter accounts, facebook and other social channels actively.
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