Social Media Participation is Not Optional for Brands
For traditional marketers this is worse than a nightmare. In the old days, you could still control a conversation by throwing enough money at it or outsmarting the media. I remember tactically forgetting to appear on the evening news in the middle of a PR crisis. Then, 24 hours later the media had moved on, and so did the water-cooler conversations.
Faced with the same crisis on the Web today, I'd need to blog, write and influence my heart out to contain the message. And even if I was especially fast, truthful and professional about it, I would probably fail because Google footprints cannot be erased.
That is why - in my opinion - anyone involved in sales or marketing has no other option but to accept the social media reality and manage every contact as if they were the editor-in-chief of the WSJ himself.
