Peter Shankman wrote an epic post on Business Insider called Why I Will Never, Ever Hire A “Social Media Expert”. The 1st sentence tells you that you’re in for a good rant:

I was going to call this article “All ‘Social Media Experts’ Need To Go Die In A Fire,” but I figured I should be nicer than that.

This should be required reading if you’re planning on outsourcing your social media to an ‘expert’. The author’s ultimate point is that social media is not a magic pill that will make your company successful. To achieve success, the formula is “solid marketing and stellar customer service, just like it’s been since the beginning of time”. He goes on to explain how companies should be using social media – by being transparent, relevant, brief and by knowing your customer.

I get approached by too many companies who see social media as a shortcut. They want to make a cool Facebook page, get lots of fans and followers and then expect success to follow. Others want to create a whole new department to handle social media marketing. Social media is just another facet of marketing and customer service. (Then again, maybe those who approached me don’t have marketing and customer service departments).

Please recognize social media for what it is. I understand that things are different, and that it may be a big headache to learn about Twitter when everyone seems to be speaking in a different language. But 20 years ago when computers and email was becoming an essential communications tools, your company didn’t outsource it to a computer and email typing expert right?

The bottom line is that if you care enough about your company and brand, you’ll make it your business to learn up about these social tools so that you can speak to your customers on the same frequency. It’s an excuse to say that it’s too difficult, or that you need to be an expert. Non-experts get by just fine in social media.

Jump into it and start learning. I’ll make you a promise – tweet me (I’m @blogjunkie on Twitter) and tell me you’re new. I’ll be your first follower and I’ll answer any questions you have. And if you need more in-depth instruction, I’ll be happy to provide you with customized coaching or training.

Yesterday, Facebook showed me the ad above for lingerie. In case you’re wondering, NO – I’m not a cross dresser who likes to dress up in baby dolls and teddies.

While it was a good laugh for my friends, this ad campaign is a typical example of a rookie mistake in online marketing: not taking advantage of targeting options in online advertising.

Online advertising is not like traditional advertising

If an advertiser could only choose a single traditional advertising channel to run their campaign, they would probably choose the channel that would reach the most people. If it was a choice between The Star, Malay Mail and The Sun, the advertiser would most likely choose The Star because it has the highest circulation and biggest reach.

But there’s a problem when doing that – not all of The Star’s readership will be interested in the advertiser’s ad.

Fortunately, that problem is abated / reduced with online advertising. On the web, advertisers can track web user’s interactions to a very detailed level. For example, they can choose to show ads based on location (by looking up your IP address), interest (based on which websites you visit) or behaviour (based on what ads or links you click).

In Facebook, you can take that even further. Facebook knows A LOT about you, so advertisers can target ads on your gender, your birthday, relationship status and even your friends.

So in the example above, Secretnite.com the lingerie store could easily show their ads only to women. This would reduce the cost of their ad campaign because they are reducing the reach (audience). This will also result in better advertising ROI because money is not wasted advertising to men who are not interested in buying lingerie.