Week 3 - Making the Transition to the Social Web

After reading chapter 3 of Marketing to the Social Web, I feel like my company (Cummins) is way far behind in social web marketing. We appear to have a face on facebook and twitter, but I don't think we have transitioned to the "New Marketing" described in the reading. I think every company wants to say they are customer focused, and by rights we are, but we don't market to customers as an organic community. Many of the tweets are just links to articles on our websites. The facebook page has mainly a handful of people ranting about one portion of the business. There are plenty of other ways for the company to interact, but it appears they mainly are leaving Facebook alone and copying any story from the main website to Twitter. The company website is a standard company website with no more interaction with its customers than a contact us section.

This reading was somewhat intuitive after reading all the other material for this class, but it really drives the point to me that my company could do better in social marketing. What I found helpful was how the reading almost gave a formula as to how to connect with customers in the "New Marketing" world. It seems so simple, but the company needs to be committed. It looks like Ford is off the mark, or at least using smoke and mirrors to act like it is in the "New Marketing" world. It sounded like they were really connecting to their customers, but then, after the author's experience, it appeared Ford was censoring the posts and other interactions. How do you connect with the customer if you can't rely on their honest opinion? Overall, this was a good read that any "Old Marketing" people should read to start utilizing its best asset: the customer.