What is...SMAC?

Your customers live in a world that’s both social and mobile. Steve Cassidy explains how to ensure you’re reaching them

- Steve Cassidy

This is another of those marketing buzzwords, right?

Yes – but it’s more than that. SMAC stands for Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud, and to be fair it certainly does tick the boxes for a LinkedIn search term. Before consigning the phrase to the buzzword bin, though, it’s worth taking a moment to consider what it encapsulates. The combination of Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud constitutes a broad manifesto for interacting with your users and collecting data that can drive smarter business decisions.

Hold on – are you telling me that I need to buy into some faddish new ideology just to keep my business going?

Let’s be clear: SMAC is not a detailed game plan. It’s a helpful mnemonic for a multi-pronged approach that can help you reach your customers effectively. At a minimum, the social aspect means having a presence on social media, so your customers can talk to you, and you can learn in turn about their interests and activities. Mobile means recognizing that they might want to interact with you via a smartphone or even a wearable, which again gives you an opportunity to collect valuable insights.

This sounds like stating the obvious – do we really need to be reminded that people use Facebook and iPhones?