It's Open - Social Media Strategy Consultancy

The socialization of media and information is comparable to a new Industrial Revolution. New social media technologies are fundamentally changing how people interact and collaborate with each other The Social Web revolution is democratising content and the exchange of information. You no longer need to be a super rich media baron to publish your news and views.

The rapid emergence of social media is re-defining how companies respond to the marketplace and how they engage with their customers and stakeholders.

It is changing how people discover and share information and is also empowering them to create in addition to consume. They are no longer passive recipients of a message. They are taking ownership of the web. They are participating and creating their own media.

The fact that content is being democratised means that it is humanising brands, companies and services because they have to respond to individual comments and voices.

We believe that companies need to listen and to learn from what is going on in social media networks relevant to them and then immerse themselves in this new emerging world, engaging in conversations with stakeholders and customers in order to ensure they remain relevant, useful and commercially successful.

Brands and organisations once ruled the roost and could push their messages down to targeted consumers and occasionally to their communities. Today’s consumers are more concerned with what their peers are saying.

The ItsOpen Manifesto

Social media presents an opportunity for companies to incorporate fans and followers into their brands and connect with them in new, more personal ways.

Brands and organisations have to listen and learn and identify social media influences; they need to build relationships with people using social media tools (stakeholders and customers); they need to engage with people using social media and contribute to dialogues and empower and support their followers and fans.

Brands and organisations need to understand that it is no longer a straightforward direct route from brand/organisation message to purchase. Broadcasting a single outbound message to targeted consumers is no longer going to work like it did when social media did not exist.

People are reading reviews, writing about products, reading RSS feeds, watching videos, uploading and commenting on photos, listening to podcasts, publishing blogs, twittering, bookmarking and voting on content, meeting in virtual worlds, and making videos. All of these activities are influencing their perceptions of brands and organisations and their subjects of interest.

Social media tools enable stakeholders and consumers to literally by-pass traditional organisations like companies and share information with themselves globally, 24 hours a day in real-time. Consumers are already editing and creating their own brand commercials online and they are probably talking about you online now and probably not in the way you are expecting. To remain relevant and economically successful, brands and organisations need to adopt new communications models to relate to this new emerging world.

We believe there are brands and organisations which are closed to social media and those that are open.

Closed brands target consumers whereas Open brands foster communities of consumers.

Closed brands believe in monologues whereas Open brands believe in dialogues.

Closed brands concentrate on awareness but Open brands are interested in engagement.

Closed brands are created by marketers but Open brands are co-created with consumers.

Closed brands believe in brand management but Open brands stand for brand stewardship.

Are you open or closed? Do you want to be closed or do you want to be open?