When placing social media in business discussion, there are usually three elephants in the room that need to be addressed:
1) it is not a mass medium - it's an intimacy medium - at least in it's current form - it has still not attracted the mainstream in totality or at any frequency to stand by itself - thus, if you want "reach" as a marketing objective, you must complement it with publicity and messaging in traditional media outlets; regardless, most marketing efforts spend nearly close enough to the marketing value trapped in these social media outlets but social media zealots have it wrong too - not everybody likes, participates or enjoys Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Wordpress, insert favorite social network here - these people may in fact be the great unwashed, but if you're running a business, you invariably need to cater to them
2) It is a tactic - it's not the end objective - although it's a bright shiny thing that is often praised, monitored by the press and frequently misunderstood, social media in its classic definition (blogs, podcasts, social networks) is one of only a long list of peer-generated tactics that drive a company's goals, that's why my company Agent Wildfire, although social media practitioners, never specialize in it - we provide more value by being a full service provider of influencer campaigns, community building, influencer programs, product seeding, social media applications, blogger outreach, buzz and viral marketing, experiential initiatives, user generated content, advisory panel building and a wealth of other forms of alternative strategies and tactics that together lead to company and brand impact. I can count many industry people who don't put social media in the perspective it requires (and why would they given their level of social media specialization and vested interests?)
3) it is insight driven - not principally a sales driver - most active social media people are what we call Tastemakers and Trendspotters- they are quick to jump on new things and like to create and navigate through the wealth of change - they usually have profound talents in spotting interesting new stuff, identifying why its cool, mashing it up with other things they've seen and providing a roster of content to be associated with the next big thing - conversely the social media hardcore can be seen my mainstream audiences as highly discredible, partisan, unstable and unbankable, thus it's a tough road to hew from great blog posts to instant sales (yes, TechCrunch is one blog that is bankabale), as marketing execs around the world seem to concur.
It is however a great tool to be used for generating insights. Note the graph attached by a TNS-Cymfony study that states that 33% of senior marketing execs view social media's biggest role as an insight driver, followed by awareness, loyalty and reputation.
Much as clients and ad agencies have tried to ask their traditional media and ads to achieve way more than it can handle, as digital and social media experts, let's not demand social media to impact more than it is set up to do.
If you look at the other chart in the survey, in marketing execs view, social media's impact is in 6 key company areas:
- Filtering social media genuine insights and perceptions (65%) - the research department
- Creating word of mouth through influential online sources (62%) - the marketing department
- Social media publicity (45%) - the PR department/agency
- Posting on video sites and complementing traditional ad channels (35%) - the creative department
- Participating in social networks (34%) - the community-building department
- Hosting a brand/corporate blog (31%) - the communications department
The notion that "social media" represents the future research department for smart companies gets limited air play. Part of the reason is that by and large, research companies aren't the most progressive of organizations themselves and haven't embraced this concept yet (perhaps there's less incentive in monitoring conversation than hosting it themselves). And the other reason, not many companies let their research departments go near steering the company social media car.
So down with focus groups and mercenary online panels and cheers to social media - the future research department of smart companies.
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