Is Social Media a fad like Furby?
This post may seem a bit ironic coming from someone who provides social media seminars and training but there seems to be an almost unhealthy fascination with social media among marketers at the moment. In the end, we’ll all realise that “social media” will become just “regular ol’ media”.
Social Media is not new
Marketers have jumped on social media as a buzzword to justify their budgets. Agencies include whole sections on social media in their proposals to their clients. PR pros now invite bloggers and social media influencers to their press events.
Blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Oooh! How new and shiny they are.
I got news for you pal–social media is not new. Way before the invention of the printing press and broadcast television, traders gathered in a bazaar or market to sell their wares. They sold to each other directly in a social context i.e. based on their relationships and reputation.
With the invention of broadcast media and advertising, traders began selling their products on a larger scale and substituted their relationship and reputation for customer loyalty and their brand. David Meerman Scott, author of “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” admitted that the “new rules” aren’t new at all and has called the mass media phenomenon an “aberration”.
The tools of social media (blogs, the Facebook and the Twitter) simply facilitate one-to-one connections and relationships without the constraint of physical space and time. In other words, you don’t need to be in the bazaar to build your relationship with your customers anymore. Add that to the speed of conversation and the reach of the internet and boom–social media is now rivaling traditional media as an influence platform.
Bottom line: the tools of social media are new, and being social is about connecting, building relationships and facilitating interactions between seller and buyer once again.
Wake up call
Recently marketers have woken up with social media pounding at their door. Suddenly consumer opinions of their brand are plastered all over the internet. Google and gang are showing blog posts and tweets on the front page for searches about their brand.
“How should we respond?” asks the marketer or product manager.
“Respond? No way!” exclaims the legal department.
But CNN is featuring tweets in its coverage. Elections are swayed with blogs. Social media has arrived in the mainstream. As reluctant as some are, marketers and their agencies are all jumping on the bandwagon.
Social media ‘experts’–do you really need one?
Social Media Specialists
Many thought leaders have observed that there’s suddenly an over-abundance social media gurus and consultants. Brian Solis says that social media is rife with experts but starved of authorities. (Yes, that may include me but that’s why social media is only 1 of the doohickeys in my bag of tricks.)
The reason for this landrush is because marketers are scrambling to get up to speed with this social media “thing”. The opportunity of the moment is for experts to help organisations understand and take their first baby steps with social media.
Unfortunately this window of opportunity is going to close very soon for 2 main reasons:
1) Marketers will start to realise that social media interactions are simply social interactions which they’ve been trained with since kindergarten. Once the kids who grew up with social media today become the marketers of tomorrow, “social media” will simply become “regular ol’ media”.
2) In the social era of the web, your community of customers and evangelists will become your most important marketing asset. The relationships your community builds is with you, not your consultant. With that realisation I doubt that brands will want to outsource their social media or community management activities to third party consultants and experts.
Granted, in the interim some of us will still need consultants and agencies to show us the ropes in social media. If that’s the case I urge you to choose your agency wisely. Ensure that your social media partner is familiar with social technologies and not just how to launch blogs and tweet. Agencies specialising in social media should be familiar with technologies like Open Social, Facebook Connect, community platforms like KickApps or social widgets and be able to build engaging applications that fit into a brand’s overall marketing strategy.
In the meantime if you want to gain an edge over your competition you need to start building your social expertise internally. Start changing company culture to become more transparent. Engage directly in conversation with your customers and most of all learn how to build and grow your own customer community.
Bottom line / takeaway:
- Don’t do social media for social media’s sake. Understand what it really is and start developing real relationships with your customers.
- Social media is not a mysterious thing that can only be interpreted by gurus. Just use some common sense and whatever you’ve learnt since kindergarten.
- Beware of proposals filled with social media buzzwords. Your social media campaigns must relate back to your overall objective, e.g. increasing loyalty, drive product trial, etc.
Please take all of the above with a generous pinch of salt, because it is obvious that I am not a social media expert. I would however, like to know what you think so please do leave a comment below.
Image credits:
Was IST Das? – Furby
Hugh MacLeod – you’re a social media specialist?
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