“Ads 2.0, the next generation of ads, are moving away from static, impersonal, mass-produced propaganda, to dynamic, customized, personal content.  Similarly, social ads are a more useful, relevant, and personal type of advertising”

As I have mentioned in previous blogs, building a social community is a step all businesses need to take, and should want to take. I stumbled across a blog by Jeremiah Owyang that lists the ways in which developing a social media strategy can benefit companies. Here is what I took from it:

6 Ways in which Social Media Strategy Benefit Companies

1. Marketing – Integrating themselves into the social media world allows them to have access to a wider demographic of consumers, and does so at a much cheaper cost than that of traditional print and television advertising.
2. Sales – Dell Computers has surpassed $3 million in sales via links from one of its Twitter accounts  – although direct ROI is not the best way to measure the benefits of social media, examples like this sure help companies embrace it. Social media is a whole new platform that works to directly funnel potential customers to your product via promotions and sales (incentives).
3. Service and Support – Customers can help customers. This means lower support costs, and overall, customers tend to report better experiences in online forums rather than email or phone support (Forrester 2006)
4. Innovation – New ideas develop from discussions via social media platforms. Companies can benefit from the free input that the online populations willfully give out.
5. Collaboration – mass numbers of people come together to create something much greater than has ever been possible. The benefits of social media are not just for external use but internal use as well. The better a company can connect and engage at all levels allow for a more fluent work flow, where issues are addressed quicker and with better solutions. Integrating different levels of your organization will not only help engage your employees but also make them more efficient at handling customer needs – they will be able to work together to assure customer care is addressed in a  timely manner by the right area of the company. These strategies deployed correctly across multiple platforms can allow for a seamless way to get things done.
6. Customer Experience – The customer experience becomes more valuable, as the formerly inactive consumer can become active and participative with the brand. This makes it more likely that the consumer will stay active longer within the brand community, making the marketing of that brand more effective. Customers invest part of themselves into the community and are therefore investing part of themselves into the brand, and their brand loyalty.

The insight here is that:

Customers connect with each other – leaving the organizations behind. This integration of social media strategy is a way of reconnecting the company to the people.

I have just taken a look here at the company-consumer aspects of social media integration; however, social media has implications for the company-competitor relationship as well. See Company vs. Competitor: Top 8 Reasons Social Media Savvy Companies Have an Advantage.