Social Media Madness

Recently, Ashton Kutcher landed himself in a pot of hot water when he tweeted about Penn State College Football coach Joe Paterno. Kutcher made the poor decision to opinionatedly tweet about something he really had no knowledge or even a clue about. You can read more about it here.

Today, Kutcher has 8,347,780 followers on Twitter and has an immense reach in terms of communications and advertising. A message that takes him 30 seconds to create can be broadcasted to over eight million people in a matter of seconds.

Unfortunately, Kutcher found Twitter to be too overwhelming so he passed his Twitter account (@aplusk) over to his buddies at his PR firm.  It was most likely a move to salvage whatever professionalism and respect he has left on social media.

Examples such as Kutcher’s tweet about coach Paterno demonstrate the impact that social media can have. The number of companies and organizations hopping on the social media bandwagon is increasing daily, resulting in them pumping out more tweets, likes, and @’s.

Social media has become an incredibly powerful tool for businesses. No longer does advertising have to be a one-way conversation. Now, audiences can interact with their favorite business or even product, creating a two-way conversation between sellers and purchasers. Who would’ve predicted that Sour Patch Kids would have over two million Facebook likes?

Social media is now becoming a crucial tool for advertisers, seeming how they can receive feedback, receive contest entries, or help customers with troubleshooting. Running a social media campaign can take a lot of effort or not so much effort, but more effort put in usually means more results. The Social Media Manager is a new title to the work place, but a necessary one. More ad agencies and organizations are hiring social media managers in order to control the flood of social media activity during campaigns or product life cycles.

Who knows, perhaps one day people will get paid for having the most followers or friends. Advertisers could try to cash in on people with massive followings such as Kutcher, making him tweet or post about the latest product on the market. If they gave me a dollar for every Facebook friend I would have $524. Not too shabby.

However, with all of this laid out on the table, it’s doubtful that social media will ever replace traditional advertising. Social media is a great medium to interact with audiences, however it isn’t ideal for big impact, eye catching, skin tingling advertising. Social media is what Robin is to Batman, one kick A#$ addition.

So, social media and all of its wonders zipped through The Outhouse and left a bunch of messages engraved in the wall. 

What a Social Media Manager's office must look like. (Image from: pigjockey.com)