Why is Danish companies and Social Media no match?

It's official: Large and mid-size Danish companies don't use social media platform in their marketing mix. That is the very clear result of a search carried out by communication agency Støvring & Woodward, according to bureaubiz.dk. 

Everybody knows this, of course, but it's nice to get on record - so good work, Støvring & Woodward. The article also deals on the obvious question that follows: Why? 

In my opinion, it's too easy giving the companies all the blame. If they really needed to get involved with social media, they would. Today, in Denmark, social medie is a 'nice to have' and not a 'need to have'. In America, and maybe elsewhere?, it seems to be the other way around by now - if you're not taken part you're a laggard who needs to plug in very soon.

I have no doubt that many Danish companies would benefit from being more active on social media platforms - regardless if they operate internationally or domestically. Lego is the text book example of how to do this with Lego Mindstorm etc. At some point, it will happen, and every top 100 company will have an active Facebook Fan Page, Twitter account and so on, but I don't see it right around the corner.

One of the reasons we have to wait for the social media revolution to enter Denmark is that social media is getting some bad publicity overall. Facebook is a hazard to our private lives, Youtube is the place for launching dishonest campaigns about coming to Denmark and knock up our blondes, wikipedia is not to be trusted and Twitter is just plain stupid/useless. These stories make it harder to convince an already sceptical panel of top managers to get involved. Of course it does.

Marketing people and agencies need to make the case that social media are relevant and easy to implement. And maybe a small piece of technology from Squidoo called Brands in Public will help out a little bit. I saw it on Seth Godin's blog and what the technology does is allow you to monitor in one program what's said about your brand on all social platforms. It's quit a lot like Addictomatic.com, which is free, but it seems nice anyway.

Otherwise, we'll just have to be patient and keep showing off the good cases.

Before I get started

I should try to find out what kind of blog this is. 

Is it work related?

Purely privat/personal?

Somewhere in between?

I guess it's the latter. Although I'm not gonna talk about work much, I don't plan to anyway.

What I do plan to do with this blog is promote stuff I like in terms of clever business solutions etc. in or around my line of work, which is: Helping businesses build closer client relationships through platforms based on running/cycling/triatlon. 

It's a new job, I'm only just beginning these days but I like it a lot already. Working with a great little bunch of do'ers, I get to pitch and follow up ideas of how to grow our business. In this space I will talk about what inspires me and maybe a little bit about how I use these things in my job. Ok, so it probably is about work after all.

But now, off to bed.