It’s Groups That Matter Most in Social Media

Sure, one guy wrote a song about his guitar being smashed and it resulted in fame for him and shame for United Airlines. But more often what should be of real concern in reputation management (on the downside) and brand building (on the upside) is not the individual, but groups of people.

What most large or small businesses are still not realizing is the major point behind Social Media; ease of group formation and loss of control of information.

Case in point is the HSBC student protest issue in 2007. This started when HSBC offered special pricing for students around the world. A few months later they withdrew this special, after luring hundreds of thousands of students into the bank.

HSBC thought “they’re trapped now, and they don’t know where to go.” Then a student started a Facebook group, and next thing, students were joining and telling each other how to change banks.

HSBC is worldwide. So is the Web and Facebook. As soon as the online protests threatened to spill over into real-world protests, HSBC caved in.

This is just one example of the two aspects businesses and now governments, are just starting to realize. It’s not just a business or government or other large entity that can coordinate large-scale activities and manage the necessary information aspect that goes with group coordination.

For marketers, the group is more important to reach than the individual. Target the group, understand a) how they’re coordinating and b) what information they’re managing. From there you can reach the individual.

It is the ability to form groups that matters most in regards to Social Media for both online reputation management as well as brand building through Social Media.