Marketing and social media, as we all know, go hand in hand. And for me personally, I’ve had a great opportunity since September to really grasp my hands around both of these with my internship at Likeable Media. I’ve been able to help Likeable’s clients become just that– more likeable. It’s a brilliant concept and truthfully, a brilliant business.
The more I play with Facebook’s analytics and utilize various social media tracking tools, such as Radian6, Tweetchat, bit.ly and many others though, I can’t help but put the work I’m doing with Likeable into perspective.
Obviously, everyone loves their social media accounts, as do businesses. Here’s why for marketers and brands: with the targeting capabilities on Facebook that surpass those on any other new, digital media, let alone traditional media, everyone, i.e., customers and prospective customers are viewed at levels that most are unaware of. And that’s only the beginning, but I’ll spare you a few hundred words on things I could go on about.
For me, where I come in with my perspective nonsense, is where I’m not sure if I should pity the ignorant– those who don’t realize that by writing similar posts or responses about what stores they shop at, what their favorite tv shows are, and who like products on Facebook, follow brands on Twitter and so forth, are putting themselves, literally and figuratively, into the hands of today’s marketers.
If you’re like me, and understand what you’re getting yourself into by publicly tweeting your opinions every day, and are fascinated by how marketing in this decade works, then it’s all fun. The idea of how ads and suggested people and brands to follow on Twitter are catered to your interests is something to celebrate, to an extent at least. I won’t lie, I was against this sort of thing while still in college, but after working with Likeable for many months now, have changed my mind.
Privacy gets to me though. I understand there are still plenty of people that simply want to be left alone, want to protect themselves and their children and just don’t want their activities on the Internet to be tracked. So I respect their decisions to stay away from social media and to question everything when making transactions online.
But should I still feel bad about those claim they hate all of the things marketers do, even though they don’t do anything to change their privacy settings or attempt to stay away from social media?
