“Social media is about reaching out to your customers. Thousands of them. All at once.”
“Social media is like a cocktail party, where your message receives an instant massive global audience.”
“Social media enables brands to connect with their consumers”
“Social media is changing the way businesses operate forever.”
I could go on, and everyone can probably add another couple of clichés to this list of eulogies. As a natural sceptic the more I hear these evangelical messages the more I get uncomfortable about the reality that exists beyond the hype. Just how life-changing is the impact of social media? Is it a case of the grand deception along the lines of the story of the Emperor’s new clothes? Or is it more akin to an electric drill: very powerful in the right hands and with a clearly defined purpose, but useless (or even dangerous) if used without adequate thought?
Last night I attended the latest event organised by CIMTIG (the travel group of the Chartered Institute of Marketing). The topic of the evening was Viral Marketing: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. We had four 15 minute presentations (Molly Flatt, Chief WOM Evangelist from 1000 Heads; Stu Howath, Director of KoKo Digital; Daniel Kennedy, Director at SKV Communications; and Elliot Pritchard, New Media Manager for P&O Cruises) with moderation by Kevin May (editor of Tnooz). The views of the four speakers were sufficiently diverse to promote a lively debate that could have run on for longer than the evening allowed.
I have to admit though, that while I enjoyed the session and the time flew by very quickly, I left the evening none the wiser about viral marketing. From the general buzz by the buffet table later I was relieved to learn that I was far from alone in my confusion. What is the point of viral marketing? So what if your video gets a million hits? How does this lead to sustainable measurable revenue? And does a massive campaign such as The Best Job in the World (mentioned many times during the evening) actually translate into clearly attributable $$$? These questions were touched on, but no clear answers provided.
Perhaps there are no clear answers. This is why selling social media as a concept to the financial directors of the world can be such a tough task. How do we measure the return on an investment that is, in itself, difficult to define? As an finance director of a company I can’t stick a million page hits into my bank account any more than I can cash in 10,000 Twitter followers or Facebook fans.
“But you’re building a community”, I hear. Community building is undoubtedly a key component of the new media world. By making it easy for customers and potential customers to communicate with a brand, companies can gain valuable intelligence when considering their products and services. In turn their customers are likely to be more responsive when they receive a relevant call to action (a targetted offer or news of a new product).
All of us who blog, tweet or are active on Facebook or LinkedIn are, for our own very diverse reasons, engaged in growing our own communities. Surely then, if the essence of using social media is in communicating with others, the composition of that community becomes of paramount importance.
Attracting the right people to our communities has to be carefully considered. 100 followers with whom we regularly exchange news and opinions, discuss trivia and, heaven forbid, meet face to face (if practical) provides us with a very different result to 50,000 casual, mainly anonoymous and uncommitted ‘followers’. At the same time a diverse group of individuals from a wide range of interests and disciplines may provide more value to us than a regular conversation with the same small group of friends.
Perhaps the very words ‘viral marketing’ are the problem here. In the quest for being measured by numbers with many zeros at the end, is viral marketing taking the focus away from what really matters: meaningful connections? Listening to the debate it was clear that viral marketing is not a sensible end in itself, but needs to be considered one tool in an overall marketing strategy. The chase for numbers alone is indeed a hunt for fool’s gold.
In this drive for constant new ideas and catchphrases, perhaps there will be a time soon for antiviral marketing (I just googled this and realise it will need a different name); where the message goes out to a smallest number of people who can produce the biggest change. It would certainly relieve the internet of an awful lot of clutter.
by Andy Jarosz, 501 Places
Hi Andy,
This issue is so problematic for big business, even more so for the people who have been promoting viral and social media marketing. I remember the valuations (un-tested) paced on Facebook at the height of the frenzy.
The excitement stems from the identifying and targeting of specific consumers. Despite looking like a scatter-gun approach, as it reaches a huge (potential) audience, this group, as defined by their own network, should therefore be aligned exactly with the product. However…
Increasingly, pop up video, pre-run, post-run and all the other adds are simply becoming content. They are part of the fabric.
The people most likely to accept that their data is shared – in trade for social networking tools – are the same individuals who can happily ignore the adds. Yes, they will be reached, but no, they won’t be engaged.
Expert voices do have sway, so watch out for adds disguised as ‘opinions’ and sales vehicles masquerading as sit-coms.
Businesses need to have a presence, maintaining a blog is increasingly vital as it can be a showcase for their expert knowledge, a place where people return without fear of having their data mined. If it can be made an authoritative place, it will become a resource.
We all love good information; so with a web thick with trivia, we just have to be ‘out there’ and expert in our topic.
If a firm is unsure how to proceed with its viral/social adds they should apply the Berghaus principle: “Trust is earned”.
Thanks Mark for such a good analysis, and very pithy words to end.
There are so many people shouting their messages online now that even being clever, funny or original is not enough to automatically make the effort invested bring in a measurable return. People can be reached, as you say, but to engage them requires something different. Lots to think about there, thanks Mark.