It's Not Just Social Media Marketing, It's a New Kind of Marketing

Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody

Chapter 7 Review

In this chapter Shirky talks about the reasons behind the rise of successful social movements in recent years. Social tools have allowed individuals to easily find and connect with like-mended people. And, as Shirky puts it, "Whenever you improve a group's ability to communicate internally, you change the things it is capable of." Social Web has granted virtually unlimited access to information to its users. What's more, it provided the tools for people to easily share that information as well as create and distribute new content to the masses. This information flow has empowered web users. And when enough people get together, they are now capable of changing long-established institutional, political and societal structures.

In this context, social media marketing is not just marketing on social media sites. It is a new kind of brand (organization, institution, etc.) to consumer interaction, where the consumer is well-aware that he is now an active - and very powerful - participant of the conversation. This concept can be hard to grasp for people brought up on traditional media.

Today, any marketing initiative is not just a final product of efforts by a creative agency, paying company and media outlet. It is rather a process, a living organism that evolves and changes in the hands of consumers. To be successful on social media, companies and organizations need to be ready to give up the control over their brands and messages they are so used to having. Instead, organizations need to learn how to facilitate conversations and provide customers with the tools to connect, communicate and take action in ways that are beneficial for both, the facilitating company and the users.