This is difficult for international brand to embrace social media, as it goes against their will to control all the aspect of their communication. Indeed, companies have spent billions of dollars to vehicle a powerful image, and hence, to secure the way customers perceive the brand’s tune and positioning. But social media have allowed customers and people to speak about what they actually think about the brand. While before customers could chat about their feeling about brands with their relatives, they can now spread the word of mouth worldwide.
Nevertheless, brands and companies were forced to use these social media since they are getting more and more important, as mass media audience is plummeting and social media are rocketing.
Now I have already discussed on this blog about the issues company have with social media. And I understand them. But I have seen the past year a lot of effort from different actors of different industries developing some community managing activities, which are promising. Now I think that most of companies are not entering yet into a relationship with social media users, keeping a up to bottom strategy in terms of communication, instead of actually interacting as the media allows them to.
But it is a matter of time companies will have staff and teams able to work on it.
