Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube; it’s tough to do business these days without having at least a fledgling presence on these and other social media sites. Although the purest definition of social media is “a technology platform that connects people,” it can also be a valuable advertising platform that gives a company a way to directly engage its fans on a wide scale.
Social media from a marketing and PR perspective should be used to hold a conversation with the public, and brands should be leveraging their experts to engage, pursue and control that conversation. This is how the most successful brands engage, listen and interact with their customers across a variety of platforms. The unsuccessful ones forget this, which makes them appear stale or distant at times — and sometimes even the source of anger as “greedy corporate giants,” because mismanaged social media is the perfect recipe for a bad reputation
