Social media: successfully navigating risk

Facebook has more than 800 million users. Twitter claims 100 million users, who generate 230 million tweets a day. The fact that these services are both blocked in China has not dampened the social media bug there—Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo, China’s two leading micro blogging sites, claim 250 million and more than 300 million users, respectively.

One look at these sorts of audiences is enough in itself to demonstrate the potential of social media to deliver hitherto unheard-of consumer audiences to brands. But it is not just the scale of the potential audience that is attractive.

Perhaps more significant is the changed interactive dynamic between brand and customer that is facilitated by social media. Rather than being a one-to-many medium, marketing has now become a two-way conversation between brand and customer, allowing a level of personalisation and behavioural understanding that is a marketer’s dream.

Other attractions of social media marketing include: