[wptabtitle] Social Media is Overrated[/wptabtitle] [wptabcontent]Whenever a new “pop” term comes into marketing use my BS detector automatically goes off. Colleagues or pundits will start to wax and wane about the ‘next great thing’ and social media is the current poster child. [/wptabcontent] You simply must have a Facebook page, upload videos to your YouTube channel, post visuals on Pinterest, have a company page and actively engage on LinkedIn, share information on Google+, monitor user comments about your company/products on other sites (Yelp, Amazon, etc.) and use Twitter constantly. I’m exhausted just writing that sentence!
Marketing in general, and high technology marketing in particular, depends on word-of-mouth from influencers. Many classic media influencers have added blogs, tweets and other social media communications to their TV, radio, magazine and print effort. Others have emerged as pure bloggers and still others as “expert” commentators on a website.
However, it is important to remember that most of those posting comments on social media sites are not experts in any sense, often are not knowledgeable about what they are discussing and are mostly negative in what they post. Importantly, your customers don’t know any of these people. This is a radially different environment from real word-of-mouth, where you know the person, trust them and have a chance to engage in a two-way conversation.
Social Media … JAVOWOM
I would strongly urge you to work to cut through the SSVH (Self-Serving Vendor Hype) from the sites themselves, analysts, media, press, social media conferences, webinars and social media consultants … a booming market because no one else has enough knowledge to say the consultants are wrong and the CEO wants to “be social” NOW !!!
In the early 90’s I heard Regis McKenna say, “I can pick up the phone and tell you if a product will be successful after just a handful of calls”. He neglected to mention those calls would be to people like Bill Gates, Andy Grove, Steve Jobs, Gordon Moore and others like them! In his book, “Relationship Marketing” he was one of the first to advocate the customer as the center of all activity and to focus on building crucial relationships with them that help a company dominate a market. Isn’t that what Social Media is supposed to do?
A key component of relationship marketing is Word-of-Mouth (WOM) which is critical to building credibility as potential buyers use referencing to reduce their purchase risk (see The Consumer Purchase Decision Model post). Social Media is an augmented version of WOM using services like Twitter, Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. to interact quickly, rather than via traditional email, or telephone or personal conversation.
Social Media Risk
The risk to all (consumer and vendor) is that instead of consumers reaching out to those they already trust, they are getting information from people they don’t know at all. They could be company employees promoting their own product, paid shills criticizing a competitors product (I have first hand experience here) or an outlier consumers’ point of view: “I hate (fill in the blank) because … or “blank” company’s (products/services) are terrible …”.
Don’t Stop Believin … In the Old School
Social Media, in some form, may well be unavoidable, but fold it into your other channels of customer promotion: web site, SEM/SEO, tradeshows, conferences, speaking engagements, emails, direct mail, webinars, media and analyst relations, collateral, sales materials, presentations, advertising and anything else you are doing.
Promotion is important, but don’t forget the three other elements of Kotler’s 4Ps: Product, Price and Place. The investment in promotion has significantly reduced (and possibly negative) benefit if the other 3 Ps are out of whack. Above all else, put the emphasis on Product, which to me, means the Whole Product (click here for more detail), not just hardware, software or services. Good marketing cannot make up for an inferior Whole Product unless your brand and company dominate a market. Most of us are not in this position. Even then, it will only be a matter of time before your brand is negatively affected.
You and your company would be better served by “keeping your powder dry” and conserving any promotion funds until product issues can be resolved. As you should know, since social media is uncontrolled, “the cat is out of the bag” and once again marketing will be “out of the frying pan and into the fire”.
Social Media Strategies
As noted above, integrate your social media strategy into your overall marketing plan taking into account your available budget, your industry and your company’s position in the market. Don’t just “jump in” under pressure. What metrics will you use to judge success?
Most teams measure the number of visitors and their sources, the size of their network and the quantity of comments about their brand(s) or product. You need to do more. I have found the following list from SocialTimes (www.socialtimes.com/social-media-metrics) to be useful in creating social media metrics, but your list will be different to some degree and the emphasis on each will vary based on your industry. A defense contractor will be much different from a consumer company. You will notice that many items on the list are the same as you use to access your website efforts.
SocialTimes Top 10 Social Media Metrics
- Social media leads. Track web traffic breakdowns from all social media sources, and chart the top few sources over time. If members of your social media networks are sending referrals, consider measuring this data as well.
- Engagement duration. For some companies, engagement duration is more important than page views. For example, if you have a Facebook application, how much time are social network members spending using it? Is per-member usage increasing over time? Alternately, if people visit your company website from SM (Social Media) sites, how long are they spending? (Also consider tracking which pages they visit.)
- Bounce rate. Are visitors coming to your site from SM sites but quickly leaving? Maybe your landing page needs better, more relevant copy. Maybe the information they’re seeking isn’t easily found.
- Membership increase and active network size. This is the portion of your company’s social networks (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) that actively engages with your social media content (e.g., Twitter, Facebook Pages, etc.) Is your collective members, followers, fans network growing, and is there interaction with your content?
- Activity ratio. How active is your company’s collective social network? Compare the ratio of active members vs. total members, and chart this over time. There’ll always be some social network members who are inactive, but if you initiate a campaign to increase interaction, you should also measure the resulting data. Activity can be measured in a variety of ways, including usage of social applications.
- Conversions. You want social network members to convert: into subscriptions, sales (direct or through affiliates), Facebook application use, or whatever other offerings you have in your overall sales funnel and that can somehow be directly or indirectly monetized. (e.g., subscription to a weekly e-newsletter can be monetized by giving other companies access to your list in the form of advertising.) Measure all types of conversions and chart them over time.
- Brand mentions in social media. So, you have a highly active social network and members are talking about your company or the company’s brands. Measure and track both positive and negative mentions, and their quantities.
- Loyalty. Are social members interacting in the network repeatedly, sharing content and links, mentioning your brands, evangelizing? How many members reshare? How often do they reshare?
- Virality. Social members might be sharing Twitter tweets and Facebook updates relevant to your company, but is this info being reshared by their networks? How soon afterwards are they resharing? How many FoaFs (Friends of Friends) are resharing your links and content?
- Blog interaction. This is actually more than one metric lumped together. Blogs ARE part of an SMM (Social Media Marketing) toolkit, but only if you allow comments and interact with readers by responding. If you’re doing this, encourage responses either directly in the comments section of blog posts, or via Twitter. (Use a blog widget that allows this.) If your blog’s content is suitable for social voting (Digg, Propeller, Mixx, etc.) or social bookmarking (Delicious, Stumbleupon) sites, install a blog plugin that displays the necessary sharing “buttons”, then track referrals back from those sites.
Go out and be social! But don’t forget to actually talk directly to customers in the real world, not just cyberspace. It’s amazing what you will find out … and you’ll have a chance to make them brand advocates.
