Social media is not going to save your brand
When you are thinking about the social media channel the first question you have to ask yourself is “do my customers or consumers want to have a relationship with my brand” ? I mean why would someone want to have a relationship with Coke ? What’s in it for me ? The problem of course is that way too many brand think that a great social media “strategy” is going to be the savior of their brand. Coke is betting, for example, that people are going to want to see 3 20-something people go around the world and use their gadgets on where to go and what to see. This is going to make me want a Coke how?
Awareness, even in social media, does not translate into conversion. Forget the bullshit about having a conversation with people via social media because the realities are;
• the path of influence is not predictable
• a burst in traffic sent by an influential blog/event is not usually sustained
• our influences change frequently as do our needs
• influence can grow fast or slow, but can disappear fast or slow as well
• there is a big difference between ‘DISCOVERY’ and ‘BUYING DECISIONS’
in other words...
I may learn about a cool new product from the Internet, but I may actually BUY something completely different based on the experience and advice of a friend or relative I trust because I am going to check with them first before I decide to buy your product.
Now some will tell you to forget marketing and think making customers happy but that is bull as well because happy customers are, to a certain extent, not loyal anymore. Sure all social media has to be people centric but at some point your efforts had better take that consumer and move him/her to a customer or else your farting in the wind.
One other thing you should be thinking about...Twitter is losing people and right now has only a penetration of 11% among active US Internet users. That means that 89% of your audience is probably not on Twitter. So why in the hell would you allocate resources for a platform that doesn’t scale with your audience? Because you probably believe the hype around Twitter.
If you’re a marketer you need to decided where to allocate resources to provide the maximum ROI. This means that you need an audit of every customer touchpoint from your switchboard operator to your customer service people. One excellent touchpoint can be more than offset by one or two bad customer experiences.
As Jason Falls says on his social media explorer BLOG:
Blogs and social networks emerged because people (i.e. – individuals) wanted to connect on a more personal level using technology … or perhaps because the technology barrier was lowered enough to allow people to connect on a more personal level using it. These interwebs were not invented for business purposes. (They were invented to help Al Gore fix the ozone or something …
As a result, the social media purists have laid down the law and, so, to participate in social media as a business, you must do things like, “participate in the conversation,” “engage your customers,” and “talk with us not to us.
”I’ve got news for you. In the world of business, all that talk will get you exactly nowhere. Conversations do not ring the cash register. Engagement does not sell more product. Talking with people just means you have to take time to listen which prevents you from spending valuable time selling more product.
Sure new media is changing marketing but the fundamentals of marketing remain to get customers and keep them happy. If you believe a social media strategy alone is going to do that then there is some swamp land I want to sell you for your vacation house.
