In point 2, do you mean that a company’s entire marketing arm should have a social media focus [...] ?

Yes, I think businesses should think carefully about how they plan their marketing efforts and how best to repurpose those efforts for the social web.

Slogans like “as seen on TV” on the net, could be reversed I guess to say “join the heated debate online by logging into…” on the TV show.

I think that’s a brilliant idea. Over here, the BBC have a service called BBCi (BBC Interactive), which they use for certain programs, like football, rugby or snooker coverage, so fans can share their thoughts, as well as current affairs shows like Newsnight, so the public can air their concerns and have them mentioned on the show live.

Some still think social media is just a passing, transient activity. I don’t. But even if it was, it’s of such a size now, it’s worth spending the time and effort making the most of it right now…

In point 2, do you mean that a company’s entire marketing arm should have a social media focus, so that it perhaps still spends time and resources on traditional means of marketing itself, whilst focusing slightly more heavily its efforts within social media? Like it might start out as 75% of the old ways, 25% focusing resources on social media. Then gradually reversing those numbers, steadily increasing support given to the social media arm of the marketing department. It seems great to have one single, total, self-supporting communication strategy, where the flyers, TV and radio advertisements all support each other and support what is found in social media. Slogans like “as seen on TV” on the net, could be reversed I guess to say “join the heated debate online by logging into…” on the TV show.

I keep thinking, it’s best to keep utilising some of the old traditional means of advertising, adding social media to the mix and capitilise on it more whilst it is hot. And of course as I think you said, to look to smaller more agile businesses for trends and how to adapt to trends. I wonder what comes after social media and how marketing departments will need to evolve then.

Alex, it’s easy to see how copyright can really put the breaks on things, which is a real shame. You’d think the other party would be more than happy to see their adverts given a new lease of life, especially if those brands (if not the particular campaigns) are still active.

Kurt, your “Mohamed and the mountain” styled analogy is worth an article in its own right. The whole social media thing is a learning curve for everyone, but even more so bigger businesses, because there’s more people involved and more decisions to be made.

Some nice points.

I think that businesses will end up adapting to social media in the long run rather than social media adapting to business, and this will come primarily as the recession continues to whittle away at marketing and PR functions within large organizations. Big, centralized companies really do not benefit from the distributed, networked approach that most social media takes, in great part because it is almost impossible to completely control the message in that space without obviously appearing “corporate”.

For instance, I cannot see a company such as Coca-Cola being seen as anything but a billboard in Facebook or an annoyance in the Twitter stream. Now, if someone were tweeting about the trials and travails of being a Coke delivery man, that may be effective (indeed, I’d say it’d be a brilliant ad’ campaign in the medium) but I honestly do not see it being approved by higher authority within the organization.

Part of the long term reshaping of the corporate landscape, I suspect.

In a nutshell:

* They have a long history of producing funny TV commercials that the public have loved

* They wanted to make a YouTube channel of their historical content, new ads and other video content going forward. I was very excited about this - it would have been brilliant

* The content was *already* on YouTube having been submitted by members of the public, getting millions of views and great feedback.

HOWEVER because the rights to that content was held by an advertising agency, who would have demanded a considerable sum of money to license it for that kind of use, the idea had to be shelved.

I find more and more that the best opportunities of social media are for small companies who are trying to build a brand and can produce their own content and manage relationships. It’s more problematic for bigger brands.

The unwillingness of marketers to *truly* engage is often a problem. Many just want to send a message out there and dread getting even a single email from a customer in response.

Less savvy marketers are often scared by the measurable nature of the web. It can show you in cold hard numbers that your banner campaign or your silly little Flash game was a failure and you’ve just wasted your money. They’d rather take out a press ad and stick their head in the sand.