It's not a popped bubble, it's your fault!
Now, there’s a question I don’t get asked very often.
Social media is, I think, currently going through that phase in its life where every business has acknowledged that they need to be involved, and some have even started to use the platforms out there, but few are applying any common sense to what they do.
I remember back in the late 90s when people seemed to believe that the internet was the answer to all of their problems. If they had a business idea, no matter how lame, it would magically be successful if it was delivered by the internet.,
It seems that for a lot of companies they seem to think that their marketing messages, no matter how boring/obvious/irrelevant will some how be read and engaged with if they use Twitter/Facebook/YouTube to deliver them!
Well, of course, they won’t.
Whilst social media offers a great new way of engaging with customers and prospects, it needs to follow the same basic rules as your other marketing and engagement strategies.
So, if your company has tried social media and it hasn’t worked, it’s not social media’s fault. It’s yours!
Hi Adam – having used Twitter for about 6 months now, as well as having been on Facebook for a couple of years, it is absolutely clear to me that many businesses don’t notice that this is ‘social’ media, not just another media for foisting themselves upon people.
‘Social’ implies that there are actually real people interacting with other real people using these media as the conduit for interconnection. Part of the problem is that so many ‘businesspeople’ operate only as one-dimensional, shallow facsimiles of what a human is. They don’t know who they are under the veneer of ROI, corporate strategy and worshipers of the ‘growth-at-all-costs’ doctrine. Rather strongly stated, perhaps, but I find that the businesses I’ve actually developed great relationships with over my past 6 months as a Twitter user are those where the person on the other end has a deep sense of personal identity, isn’t afraid to share it and has a clear intention that their interactions are about much more than trying to increase sales/revenues/market share, etc.
As a business and executive coach I find that I have many similar conversations with clients who struggle to grow their businesses by thinking that they can totally separate their humanity from their role as CEO, Marketing Executive or whatever title they operate under.
Thanks for highlighting the important point that it isn’t the media itself that determines results. It is the degree of human interaction one brings to the media that makes all the difference.
Spot on Gwen. Social Media is about being social and human.
From an individual’s perspective it enables people to stay in-touch with their friends with less effort wherever they may be located. From a business perspective it’s a chance for organisations to reach-out and engage with their customers and prospects so that they can really get to know one another and see if there’s any synergy on which a relationship can be built.
Yes, often there is a very, as you put it ‘one dimensional’ aspect to the persona. Worse still, we often see companies merely paying lip-service to phrases like ‘customer engagement’, ‘understanding’ and ‘help’ – however I’d like to think that this stuff comes out in the wash, that people see through this veneer. It strikes me that the companies that do well from social media are either ‘nice’, and people see the truth through the conduit of social media OR ‘eager to improve’ and they use social media as a way to hear what their market wants, change, and deliver it to them.
Those who use it merely as a broadcast channel like they’ve used traditional marketing and pr will catch a cold… like they always do!
Thanks for your comment.
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