Every single employee plays a marketing role in the social media

I can still remember how people identify their departments in a company as cost centers or profit centers.  It seems like everything that is related to operations are considered as cost centers.  Departments like the IT, Accounts, Finance, Logistics and even Supply Chain.  Marketing communications used to be a cost center too in the past, but as they are engaging more and more money-making opportunities, it seems like they are going towards a profit center role.

Social media is forcing a change in the company culture

Today, the new media has changed everything so drastically that many companies cannot catch up in time.  It’s not that they are not aware of the change, but it is too huge for them to change as it has also to do with the company culture which may have been fostered for so many years!  Who has ever thought that a delivery person can also play a marketing role too?

Employees and the social media

While the employees are joining facebook, adding their friends and even to show their profile, they didn’t realize that they have effectively become a marketing person for their company as well.  By putting in their company name in their facebook profile, they are telling the whole world how they are like in their own personal lives.  We are talking about everything about this person through their photographs, facebook status updates, and even the facebook applications that they are playing online.

Brand association

Putting a company name inside their personal profile seems like they are only telling the world that they are working for this company.  But to the whole world, they are also telling us that everything that this person is doing also relates back to the company too!  It is called associating yourself with your company brand.

Even if you don’t really feel belonging to your company, you really have no choice once that association is secured.  People will still see you as part of the brand.

Even if you don’t put in your brand, there are always a lot of different traces to show where you are from.  It’s almost not easy to hide from the social media.  The reason is that you are communicating with the whole world.  To a certain extend, you may tell something truthful to someone in the world.

Making the best of your role in the social media

While the employees may be having fun in facebook, the public actually embraces the idea of being personal.  They wouldn’t mind how you are behaving because you are a very real person.  You are “One Of Us” in the social media.  Back in the traditional media, it seems like the brands are “Not One Of Us”.  The brands seem so prestige that we can only reach them by paying for their products, and talking to their customer service.

The social media not only helps to bring in brand awareness through every single employee out there, these employees are actually becoming personal to the public.  For example, it feels good for me to be able to communicate with a Google employee through twitter.  Don’t you think so?