Josh Bernoff from Forrester Research, and author of books on social media and keynote speaker at B2B Marketing Forum, encourages organisations to have their employees use social media like Facebook and Twitter more. Two years ago Bernoff was a co-author of the marketing bestseller ‘Groundswell’. In this book he explained how companies can benefit from social media. In his next book ‘Empowered’ that was published only a few months ago he explains how managers and employees can gain and retain customer contact via social media.
‘Tijdschrift voor Marketing’ recently interviewed Josh. Below you will find an excerpt of this interview.
Bernoff encourages organisations to see clients as a channel. Marketeers are used to selling a product to someone and then move on to the next person. This is not the way to go in social media. Each and every buyer must be seen as a possible source of advertising. Forrester research shows that Americans influence each others buying decisions 500 billion times on a yearly basis. All advertising impressions combined add up to 2 trillion. On average 25% of this is caused by people influencing people.
It is unwise to deny employees access to Twitter, because they will find other ways to do it. There should however be rules for communicating via social media. Social media is not a question of technology but of management.
Source: Tijdschrift voor Marketing (January 2011)