“SOCIAL MEDIA IS C**P!” ??? »

“SOCIAL MEDIA IS C**P!” ???

Ready to write off social media as a fad? Are you going around with your "original" statement that social media isn't worth the bother? The first question I'd ask is, "What's your marketing strategy?" Beware: garbage in, garbage out!

This morning, on LinkedIn, I saw a discussion that had been started via the EMarketing Association titled, “SOCIAL MEDIA IS C**P!”

Of course, that attracted my interest; the first thing I did was look at who wrote it (the President of an “e-marketing solutions” company). Next I read the posting, and then I looked at his profile to see what his background entailed.

And had you been sitting next to me at the time, you would’ve simply heard a big sigh.

This type of comment fascinates me, yet also punctuates a lot of what I’ve been saying (especially for the past year) about many I have encountered who have decided to focus their recent career in the “e-world” – specifically, those who started as IT and now work in social media (which was basically this guy’s background). We have people out in the public saying things like this while totally missing the point, because they decided to enter a field without knowing it’s place or real application.

That would be the same as me deciding to go into the accounting world, then walking up to an accountant and saying, “QuickBooks is C**P!” To some people, that may be true – especially those who don’t know how to use it, those who are intimidated by it, and/or those who don’t have any sound financial practice to their company to begin with.

Here’s my advice: LEARN YOUR MARKETING BEFORE WORKING IN THE MARKETING WORLD!

That’s the problem today; people don’t look at someone’s background anymore before accepting what they say at face value, or understanding that person’s motivation behind what they say.

So, as a 20+-year strategic marketing veteran, I’ll say this: Contrary to what many “gurus” say, social media in itself isn’t a be all, end all. It’s not a strategy – it’s a TOOL that helps to accomplish a strategy. And how effective or ineffective that tool is depends on how sound the strategy is behind it.

So, what you really need to say to make your statement true, with the proper marketing understanding applied to it, is actually:

TOOL USE + NO STRATEGY = C**P

You can’t say that social media in itself is c**p – in my opinion, it’s actually one of the most effective worldwide “one-on-one” communication tools that has been developed, probably ever. However, as in any other marketing and/or communications tool, if it’s used without a strategy or direction in mind, it will do a whole lot of nothing for you. However, if there is a strategy behind it, and there’s a plan regarding it’s approach, it can actually be a VERY effective medium, especially in terms of:

target market predisposition to buy
establishing expertise
establishing visibility
adding value to the producer-customer relationship

Over the past 10 years, we’ve seen a major paradigm shift in the marketing world: What used to be most important to consumers was the PRODUCT or SERVICE; today, it is now that the PEOPLE behind the product or service is JUST AS IMPORTANT as the product or service itself – especially regarding interaction via customer service.

Another important statistic: If you look at research statistics today, 85% of all brand purchasing decisions are made by women. There have been a lot of studies looking at purchasing psychology, too: Where men’s buying decisions often have to do with a feature checklist, women are much more aware of the QUALITY of the transaction – customer service, understanding of the product/service, and understanding of the philosophy behind it. It’s relationship based. Therefore, social media is a beautiful tool to accomplish this. And guess who is the fastest growing population in the adoption of social media to influence their buying decisions? Yep, you got it – women.

So, you see, I always raise an eyebrow when someone just flat out tells me a TOOL is c**p, whether it’s social media, a Website, a brochure, an advertisement, or anything else. Because the first question I ask is, what is the strategy it’s supposed to support? The next is, what was your specific objective in using it? Then I ask them to tell me about the rest of the integrated marketing mix that’s being used to support that strategy and objective.

99 times out of 100, they can’t provide me with a viable response to any of those three.

Enough said.

What are your thoughts on this, in terms of your business?