If you want to have a chuckle, visit both the Fox News website and the CNN news site tomorrow morning. You won’t believe both organizations are reporting from the same planet. They’ll have totally different stories, headlines, and perspectives.
Marketers are discovering they too live in two different worlds…the online ’virtual’ world, and the real world. That point was driven home by a story in a Sunday New York Times article– “Brands Heed Social Media. They’re Advised Not to Forget Word of Mouth.”
While social media provides interesting, in-the-moment feedback, a study by Ed Keller and Brad Fay of Engagement Labs suggests that social media can often be a misleading source of information about consumers.
As Fay told The Times, “The danger is you can make some pretty big mistakes if you assume the conversations happening online are also happening offline. Very often, they’re heading in different directions.”
When President Trump sent an angry tweet blasting Nordstrom for dropping his daughter’s clothing line, his supporters retweeted the message to persuade their followers to boycott the retailer. But in the real world, Nordstrom’s shares rose, and it outperformed its rivals in the troubled retail industry in the following months.
The Times article went on to explain, “The most negative and most outrageous comments often get the most traction on social media. And sometimes people post comments about a topic just to get a reaction or to reflect an ‘image’ or appear ‘cool’ to their social media followers when their actual views may be quite the opposite.”
Click here to learn the three keys to managing your reputation in both worlds, the virtual online world, and the real world.
(Please be patient, your system will have to create the file for you in a pdf)
