Chapter 2

BRIDGING THE SOCIAL MEDIA GAP

Why no company can avoid social media and those that do will fail

Jeremy Woolf

In Short

  • How social media has changed society and how companies must change with it.
  • The evolution from business to social business.
  • Who should run your social media (not the office intern!).

Overview

There’s a yawning chasm between social media perception and reality.

In this chapter Jeremy Woolf, Senior Vice President and Global Social Media and Digital Lead at Text 100 (http://www.text100.com/) based in Hong Kong, will help you understand that a) you haven’t missed the boat, and b) that those furtive first steps may have been a waste of time but that’s ok as long as you know where you’re going (and can correct your course!).

This last point is critical – unless you understand the destination and focus on incremental change, you’ll struggle.

Using international real-world examples, practical steps you can take to ensure you’re using social media channels appropriately and with purpose are discussed.

It has been 20 years since Geoffrey A. Moore published his seminal marketing tome, Crossing the Chasm. Moore’s core tenet was that there is a significant gap in technology buying – between the enthusiastic “early adopters” and other customer segments led by the pragmatic “early majority”. He believed marketers should create programmes for one group of customers at a time, and then use each group to help market to the next group.

Though first published in 1991, Crossing ...

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