Real-Time Marketing:  The final Chapter

For starters, I’d like to say I really enjoyed this book, and therefore recommend it to anyone else studying social media.  It most definitely contains a variety of relevant information concerning how businesses and news companies can utilize social media to better connect with audiences. 

The last chapter of this book focuses less on the actual techniques of social media, but more of how to implement a real-time plan.  Anyone can say that they will adopt a real-time strategy toward with social media approach, but few actually know how to do it effectively.  The author, David Meerman Scott, compares it to adopting a new exercise routine.  You simply have to do it.  You have to become focused on the challenge and then you can implement any changes needed. 

People often don’t know where to start because the realm of social media is very different from typical marketing and communication techniques.  This is why Scott says, “we need to unlearn what we’ve learned in the last half century about communication.”  Clearly, reaching people in an effective manner has changed drastically from the 1950s.  Now, via social media and the Internet, people have been given the possibility to respond to marketing and businesses.  Their opinions are now being heard along with marketing messages, which is a predominant difference between the kinds of communication over the last half century compared to now.  In essence, it used to be one-way communication compared to the kind of two-way communication seen now which is ever present through multiple channels of medium.