Social media and how to make meaningful use of it in marketing terms is a subject of extensive debate. Like with anything new, there are constant experiments in this space and the blogosphere is filled with practices, observations and learnings.
Manish Mehta of Dell brings an extremely valuable perspective to this subject in this post which appeared in today's HuffPost. He makes the fundamental point that trying to use social media to further business strategy is approaching the issue from the wrong side of the stick. Social media, he says is a mean to determine the business strategy rather than furthering it. Like any good insight, what a simple and elegant thought.
Brands often approach this space salivating at the prospect of engaging with a more evolved, involved and (possibly) articulate bunch of people. But the moment we enter the midst of this crowd we start marketing ourselves, frequently in a crass manner, occasionally with some panache. The problem is, nobody likes an in-your-face sales pitch in a social space. Nobody likes the time-share people who pulverize them with two hours of spiel.
This social space can be infinitely more useful if it's seen as a forum to hear as much as to talk; to engage more than to sell. Finally it's about relating to people in this space at a 'human' level. Not exactly rocket science. As Manish says in his post, that's basically what the Mom and Pop shop of the old days did.
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