Tip: Pushing your marketing campaign through social media channels isn’t “social.” It’s marketing. Nothing has changed.
Your marketing department or agency might be telling you that you have a social media program, but you don’t. You might be paying for “social,” but that isn’t what you are getting for your money. What is really happening is this: You are buying the same digital marketing campaigns you were buying five years ago, except now, they also include Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.
You can call it “social” all you want, but it isn’t.
Want to know what else? This:
This (above) is a typical example of what happens in the course of a successful marketing, PR or advertising campaign. Best case scenario: You spend money on the campaign, the campaign generates attention while it is funded, people buy some of your stuff, and when the money runs out, things go back to where they were before the campaign started.
Now let me show you what happens when you incorporate social media into the same campaign mechanism. Ready? This is going to blow your mind. Here we go. A marketing campaign using social media:
Pretty wild, huh?
If you didn’t notice the subtle sleight of hand, let me illustrate the concept slightly differently. Ready?
Your campaign without social media:
And now the same campaign with social media:
See what happened here? Totally different thing, right? (Thanks to Daniel Agee for the clever visual subterfuge. Inserting a human head onto my body was pretty impressive photoshop mastery.)
So… right. In the end, it is exactly the same thing, just wrapped in a different skin.
If you are using social media channels for “marketing” and mostly for campaigns, no wonder you aren’t getting any concrete results: You are doing the same old stuff that already wasn’t working all that well five years ago, only it has been repackaged to sound hip with the times and include a few more channels. That’s it. The only problem is this: You aren’t doing “social.” You are still basically just creating content, pushing it out to potential customers, and hoping they will bite.
And that is why you are getting nowhere in social media, no matter how many people click “follow” or “like” on your stuff.
By the way, if you are gauging success by measuring retweets, followers, shares and “likes,” I guess you also gauge success by measuring website hits, right? Same deal. Same ridiculous, empty, diversionary metrics that mean absolutely nothing. People clicking on buttons on the internet is about as valuable to your business as counting how many cars drive by your office every day.
Want to see the difference between a company that takes its social media program seriously versus one that only uses social media for marketing campaigns?
Here is what a business that uses social media for marketing looks like:
Each one of those arrows represents a campaign. If you think of campaigns as microcycles of spend, attention and impact, the above diagram shows six subsequent campaigns and their long term impact on business growth. The orange line above the campaign microcycles illustrates temporary jumps in sales or business growth, which tend to wane between campaigns but remain relatively flat over time. This line shows anywhere between 0% to 10% annual growth.
Now let’s look at companies using social media more holistically:
Note that in the above example, social media is used for more than just campaigns. The business is using social media not only to acquire new customers or trigger a spike in business, but to retain customers as well, to develop them into active community participants, loyal repeat customers, thereby increasing their buy rate, transaction yield, and their reach into lateral networks through organic word of mouth. In this model, campaigns are merely marketing microcycles of attention in a larger growth strategy focusing on building customer relationships.
Another way to look at the process is this:
If you aren’t familiar with plateaus, the stair-like portion of the diagram illustrates what role the campaigns play in a model where social media is integrated into a business in every department: customer service, technical support, community management, product management, PR, HR, R&D, etc.
In this model, campaigns drive attention and participation, just as before. Social media activity, through community management, online customer service, customer engagement and other truly social modes of social communications help maintain (even stabilize) customer participation not only in dialog but in transactions as well. Social communications become the answer to the “now what?” question asked in the first two diagrams of this post: Use each campaign to get you to the next level of attention and activity, and instead of letting it all die back down once the campaign is over, maintain it through engagement. Once things settle at that level, get to the next plateau using another campaign.
This really isn’t rocket science.
If you want results, think. Use your head. Don’t keep doing the same thing over and over again hoping for different results each time. Calling “marketing” by another name or adding “social media” to it won’t change what it is: Marketing. Just because your ad agency’s digital department has rebranded itself a “social media” department doesn’t mean anything has changed or improved. Same products and services, different skin. That’s it.
If you don’t believe me, that’s fine. Just keep pushing marketing content out through social media channels and see where that gets you. As long as those budget dollars keep coming, digital marketing companies will eagerly sell you whatever services you want.
Don’t be a sucker. Focus on results, not buzzwords and BS.
PS: Some of this stuff is covered in my upcoming book – “Social Media R.O.I.” available for pre-order on Amazon:
Brand Building and Online Marketing Blog 
Nice post with points well made, especially about measurement. I disagree, however with one point, marketing was never just about broadcast or push, marketing was and is always about customer centricity and engagement. What social media has brought is a wider and deeper access and in combination with mobile it has brought user defined engagement versus brand defined engagement.
Felix
You and I agree on the true nature of good marketing. unfortunately, most marketers don’t operate that way (or rather, execute that way). In the end, they sell campaigns and campaigns are mostly about push. Even when you see some element of pull (like crowd-sourcing and submitting pictures or suggestions), it is still a scheme, not truly a relationship platform.
Companies that care about their customers and understand the value of building relationships every day, all day, with every interaction (that is, companies that consider customer service to be an important part of their customer relationship management process) will naturally tend to do well in social media. Companies that look at their customers as wallets with legs will continue to look at marketing as push, and social media as push channels. (It’s a character flaw before it becomes a strategic miscalculation.) Show me companies that tend to focus first and foremost on creating content instead of listening, and I will show you companies that see social media primarily as a push channel.
I wish that marketing were about customer centricity and engagement, but more often than not, it isn’t. And that’s a shame, because SM gives it scale.
Thanks for the comment, Felix.
I agree with you and that is a shame – to make the offering even stronger I would also encourage everybody to put mobile into the mix. Mobile is for me a much bigger game changer than Social Media – the impact is more immediate.
You have done a fabulous job of illustrating one of the most frustrating aspects of social media work — the subtle things that make tactical approaches completely and totally different, yet vital and necessary if we have any chance of being able to help bolster any campaign activity in an effective and lasting way.
Love your charts – I will steal them (and credit you, of course).
Please do. I made them super simple so that you can easily draw them on cocktail napkins and white boards, even. 😉
Olivier – as always..well said. Agree with Shannon the images to illustrate your points are great and will be used with credit of course liberally many.
Cheers,
@bcahill
A big issue I see as businesses take on social media for marketing purposes is this idea of social media “campaigns.” You nail it on the head as you explain that social media should be a continuous process of engagement between online audiences and a brand. It’s not about directly selling a product, rather it is about offering helpful advice and information that indirectly adds value to your products and services. Social media engagement needs to be about encouraging customer loyalty over the long term by showing off the human side of your business. It is supposed to appeal to your audience, and there is nothing more unappealing than attempting to sell something in a space that is intended to be social.
Yep. Campaigns on their own won’t work if they aren’t supported by good business-customer relationship practices before, during and between them. It’s key.
That said, it isn’t just a matter of declaring advertising (or campaigns) dead either. They play a key role when it comes to scaling social media’s impact for an organization. It’s all about combining outcome-based strategies with the right tactics, with an eye to the bigger picture.
Thanks for the comment. 🙂
This is a great post, Olivier. In our biz, we are faced week in, week out with folks who want us to do social campaigns without wanting to go the extra step of really USING social media in their lives as part of their daily activities like we ourselves do, and then they wonder why we can’t seem to get the traction or momentum they were hoping for. It’s a delicate balance, but we have to make a living and so aren’t going to turn people down if they’re willing to pay us for social services. Lisa and I do need to eat and pay bills. 🙂 But we wish some of our clients would go further and let us help them achieve full business integration, so they would get lasting benefits and a fully developed social personality just like they have offline.
It’s frustrating to have a client with such great potential and good intentions, but who you can’t get to do what you feel they should with these new platforms that require their presence and learning the art of online communications for more than just promoting things. I guess my point is, we may see some agency failings, but it’s hard to know whether the client put the brakes on and wouldn’t do what was advised, or someone providing services doesn’t know what they’re doing. We give the best, most honest advice we can to our clients but if they don’t take it or want to do what we suggest, we just have to do what we can for them.
I totally understand. And of course, even if they want to do more, they only have the budget for the campaigns, not the internal SM program. Small steps.
1. Treat your relationship with them as an evolution. Score some wins. But eventually, tell them, look… we can keep doing this until the cows come home, but we could get you even better results if you let us help you build an internal practice to maintain the level of activity between campaigns.
2. Go back to their business goals. Get them to identify them and set targets. See what 1 or 2 departments inside the org might be a good place to create a pilot program for a joint SM practice (1/2 you, 1/2 them). Sell them on the idea, get them to reassign a bit of funding internally, and focus on moving very specific needles. (If they are revenue-focused, it’s time for some Frequency/Reach/Yield discussions. If they are loyalty/customer retention focused, time to talk to them about monitoring, customer service, and community management.)
It’s an evolution. An escalation. With every new win, you get them to see the value of investing a little more of their resources into it. Some of it, you can do for them better than they can. Other things, they can do better under your watchful eye. It doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t happen without a plan. (Not just a destination. An actual plan. Like, with steps and milestones.) 😉
There’s an art to this.
Oh, and then you get to pray that they don’t hire a moron to manage their internal social media practice. There’s that.
😀
One last thing: Your clients don’t know any better because
a) no one has explained this to them properly yet, and
b) they have been trained, for at least 2-3 generations, to think about marketing in terms of campaigns. They probably have no idea that they can have the depth of relationship that their grandparents’ businesses enjoyed with their customers back in the day by using social media as more than marketing channels. To make matters worse, they probably don’t know that that depth of “engagement” scales into breadth as well.
They just don’t know any better. They don’t know that there is another way. They haven’t seen it yet. Know what I mean? They can’t ask you to do something they don’t even know is possible. 😉
I think it goes without saying that this was a great and insightful post. It’s actually the first one of yours I read and now I realize your wisdom actually extends beyond 140 characters 😉
What brought me to take time out and comment here is that I am impressed with the way you responded to Kris’ comment. Talk about walking your talk! Taking time out to give useful (and accurate) sales advice with explanation, possible consequences (the moron) and even a historical perspective for reassurance is truly generous.
Great piece, I learned a lot, and you’ve certainly convinced me of your human-ness (stealing @sherkro term). Nice!
So clearly written and illustrated; such a compelling argument. So appreciated that you’re not trying to obfuscate to sound like an “expert” — simple and direct is so much more helpful.
Seems like what works for businesses in social media is very similar to what works for individuals just interested in communicating in social media — engagement, two-way communication, even generosity — actually, human-NESS!
Yes. Humanness is what we need in the overall management of this space: Handshakes you actually mean, real connections, genuine empathy and care.
Faking it by talking about engagement but not actually giving a sh*t about your customers is doomed to fail in a space that rejects that sort of thing as self-serving and impolite.
Thanks. 🙂
Bottom line is without an integrated strategic marketing thinking it will never work… Most businesses dip in and out of social media without any integrated strategic thinking… same than when they use to ring their agency 5 years ago and ask them to create an advertising campaign…
Regrettably far too many organisations in the UK operate without a marketing strategy… let alone an integrated social media campaign!
Just printed this off and handed it to my soon to be ex-boss.
That’s one of the best comments I’ve ever gotten.
Thanks for the compliment–just might be one of the best I have ever received.
It’s weird, considering how much money is spent in politics, you would think they would bring the A-game all the way around. Not even.
I had to puzzle over it, but I finally got the joke. That’s not a human head inserted onto your body, its a human body attached to your head!
A head, I might add, filled with amazing clarity and insight:
Community management, customer service. Customer attention, participation, and engagement…to retain and develop them into active community participants, loyal repeat customers.
Thank you for a marvelous post.
I think you just ended the discussion about social media. The world’s overheated servers salute you!
Olivier,
My only real beef with this post is that you should have replaced your head with a pretty pony instead of a dinosaur. C’mon man, where’s the continuity? LOL.
I get tired of saying this but it’s really true: Companies that are not looking at these channels, apps, venues as places to strategically extend the business and better serve constituents should wake up NOW.
Companies that aren’t linking together campaigns, programs, services, with each other — and across channels — to drive cohesive, measurable results – must learn how IMMEDIATELY.
Unfortunately, the folks that “get” this are too few and far between …. and can easily be sucked up helping a single company make critical business transitions. Most of the time, those changes are evolutionary — not revolutionary, by nature.
The people that don’t get it are typically gainfully employed or engaged – which is a travesty. Many companies reward mediocrity because they don’t know better, and never demand more. 😦
I don’t really have anything to add to this particular conversation. Just reading it, re-reading it, taking it all in.
To be perfectly honest, I just felt a need to spend some time somewhere that made sense.
If no one minds, I’m gonna hang out on this page for a few minutes until the social media vertigo calms down a bit.
/ॐ
I have to say dude, your raptor head should have been a unicorn.
I think far too many forget that strategy and tactics go hand in hand. They are either too focused on one or the other.
They also tend to separate social and media, they need both and in that order. More social, less media.
Too many are looking for quick hit success and they are getting fudged numbers to support that. Their social media manager is handing numbers that mean nothing on reports that measure nothing for the sake of keeping their job.
Great post as always! Appreciate your continued presence in this arena. Found myself in this very conversation today. My comments about the need for the business to be in an integrated relationship bumped up against the old marketing mentality of detached, manipulative and distant relationships with customers, employees and vendors. It’s clear that a culture change has to occur to produce the kinds of results that you show in your final chart. That kind of culture change means the leadership must be willing to be connected on many fronts and the risk of exposure goes way up. Eyes got wide when we talked about how there’s no opportunity for spin when you start really engaging in sm because you get found out and it takes on a life of its own. Lastly, ppl run their businesses the way they manage their personal relationships – funny how they don’t realize that their success in both is based on a willingness to authentically represent themselves and share it generously with others.
Love this post … and TOTALLY agree! Your visuals were great … thought-provoking and memorable … I will definitely be back to read more of your blog!
great greta psot we lal agree here at http://www.horos.com.gr we believ the same
Olivier,
This has to be one of the best pieces I’ve read in a long time RE: social media. Excellent piece.
Thank you.
I love this post. So often seeing folks who are just changing the name equates to changing the behavior – it’s pernicious.
I expect I’ll be linking to this a lot Olivier. Thanks again for putting it into such an easily understandable package.
Good read, very helpful!
Really interesting article. I agree it’s more about retaining customers not just acquiring new ones. Social media isn’t just about marketing it’s about connection. I’d like to recommend another article that provides more insight on common social media mistakes.
http://www.greenbuzzagency.com/social-media-you’re-doing-it-wrong
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck. Its a duck
Great points for sure. While traveling in CT recently I got to see Scott Stratten talk about similar issues with marketers trying to “do” social media. Social Media ends up doing them.
If you haven’t heard of him, the book is aptly named “UnMarketing” and I am enjoying it. Thanks for your article.
Frank in Orlando (and Hartford sometimes too)
Olivier-
Enjoyed the article. As someone who works with clients in the social media space, it is always refreshing to find someone who goes beyond number of friends, “Likes”, retweets, mentions, etc. These might be intermediate metrics, but they are obviously not the end goal. If you don’t have a vision of how social media improves revenue (or reduces costs), then there’s no point to doing it.
Jason
waa USA-TODAY-NEWS http://usa-today-news.blogspot.com
Engagement is the way to go, fully engage and understand, that is sociability.
Please don’t forget to mention the stigma and negative branding associated with irked masses who easily see through the weak maneuver to intrude into their cliquish social cloisters. Pecking order is a powerful anthropological force and nattering from the lower rungs carries instantaneous retributive sanctions.
Oh wow, no way dude that is just WAY too cool! Wow.
http://www.web-privacy.edu.tc
Well, the brilliance of this post is hard to miss, but I want to pay you special props for being able to keep all of that knowledge in a dinosaur brain, which is, according to scientists, much smaller than the human brain. I don’t know how you manage all of these great posts with that heavy burden upon you 🙂
I think one way to help companies “get” social media is to use it for customer-facing events such as showcases, symposiums, seminars etc. It’s very good at announcing things and inviting comments and contributions. It can then be used to follow up and distribute collateral or takeaways and point interested parties to products or services within the company that might interest them.
psst! Did I hear someone say “Old Spice”?
Good stuff, but the challenge is the same in terms of “focusing on results”. I think its not hard to believe that “engagement” has value, but its still difficult to understand what – specifically – that value is in aggregate.
Example: By engaging with a customer in a positive way, I may have marginally lifted his/her opinion of my product/brand, but how do I – as the marketer making the effort – take credit for that unless a customer explicitly states what that value is (ie “thanks, I’m going to buy that now”)?
In the relative anonymity (even with a real name) of Social based interaction, its hard (and inappropriate without their knowledge) to bounce that identity against a customer database to even understand whether they go on to purchase or try to resolve something through a more traditional channel.
I know that few other mediums could weather the same scrutiny, but since Social is the new kid on the marketing block – it has a more rigorous trip through the justification ringer…
Cheers,
@jrobertb
Well this post gets my vote for the best of the year so far! Its blinding flash of the obvious is its genius We needed this pointing out. I agree social media, in most cases, is just same same old marketing as we were, just using different tactics.
Building campaigns that build further campaigns that then build more traction is key to business development. In the past we have simply shouted at people for a time (a campaign) then we have gone quiet (dealing with the sales) and then shouted again. I call this buying customers, sticking them on the database and treating them like a commodity. Just look at what that costs us. Its crap.
The solution to all of this is, as you point out, to build a community around your brand that you have an enlightened and natural relationship with not a transactional one. The added benefit of this is that you build that relationship first before making the sale rather than the other way round! It stablises your marketing budget and brings such a higher return on investment. Oh and companies that do this, tend to enjoy their work much better too.
For me, this sums up the difference between ‘marketing’ and business development strategy, and not just with reference to the use of social media.
Great post.
I absolutely agree with your premise, but things are not always pure black and white. If campaigns without sustained engagement are of no value, the motion picture industry should just give up using social media marketing altogether. Nobody builds affinity with a studio or distribution company, just the title. The ONLY kind of marketing available to movie marketers is short-term, campaign-based. Yet there have been remarkable successes with social media (“Paranormal Activity” leaps to mind).
I have seen successful campaigns from other industries, as well. (Consider the Uniball pen giveaway on Facebook.) As long as the effort meets the objectives and achieves the goals of the campaign, I don’t see an issue with applying it in that manner. You could argue that the Uniball campaign was “the same old stuff,” but they went about it in an entirely different way and achieved stellar results. Long-term engagement is, of course, better, but the pen giveaway was a planned campaign and the use of Facebook was the tactic the company employed in order to produce the desired results. They gave away 10,000 pens a day — would each of those 10,000 people really want a sustained relationship with a pen company? Yet many of them are probably now repeat Uniball customers.
Or, to put it more succinctly, the campaign DID work.
As I say, I agree fundamentally, but in order to be strategic, ultimately the approach you take has to be based on a strategy designed to achieve your goals. And sometimes a short-term standalone campaign is a reasonable solution when implemented intelligently.
Fair enough, Shel. If your objective is short-term, a one-off campaign will do just fine. But in the scope of a social media program, short term thinking doesn’t work. Social capital is the product of relationships. Relationships are about retention, not acquisition, and that’s a long term thing. So, as campaigns relate to social rather than just a quick boost in sales or visits to your site, plugging into a long term model works best.
We are talking about campaigns in social media here, not just traditional campaigns like the kind that support a 3-day sales event or a product launch. 😉
Frankly, I think we’re overworking the idea of “relationships” in social media. Do people want a relationship with the company that makes their toilet paper? The staples they load into their staplers? I don’t think so. In fact, research suggests people “like” these companies’ Facebook pages because they want to be notified of coupons and specials, not because they’re looking for a relationship.
For a lot of commodities, no amount of affinity will keep people from buying a competitor’s product if it’s cheaper.
The vast majority of “relationships” I read about in social media are in fact just encounters, no different than the pleasant two-minute chat we might have with a cashier who’s ringing up our purchases. It builds affinity, but not a relationship.
Don’t misunderstand me: There’s value in weak ties. But a relationship is one that would lead someone to stand up for a company when it’s under attack, to take action to support the organization. I think that represents a very small percentage of the people who establish a connection via social channels.
I’ve been rewriting and re-rewriting a post that delves into this for the last several months, but I haven’t gotten it right yet.
Yes. Look, we aren’t talking about bullshit pretend-relationships, or “conversations” or “engagement.” Ignore the buzzwords. They’re worthless.
Here’s the key: The relationships aren’t with the company or the brand. They are with the people who work there – in the context of the brand.
Let me give you some examples:
1. I don’t have a relationship with Ford, nor do I want to. But I have a relationship with half a dozen people at Ford, including Scott Monty, and it elevates the value of the brand for me. It is making me consider buying a Ford when I get rid of my Passat, which would not have been an option before Ford got into SM. It doesn’t just unveil an affinity if there is one, but can also help drive preference AND even make me an advocate of the brand even if I haven’t yet become a customer.
2. There are 3 triathlon shops in my area. I do business mostly with one. Do you know why? Because I like the owner. His store isn’t any better. He doesn’t give me better deals. I just like him. I know him. So I do business with him. I don’t send him Christmas cards though. So we aren’t best buds. But it is a relationship nonetheless.
3. The relationships I have with my mechanic, my plumber, my web designers, my graphic designers, my favorite waiters, my tailor, the guy who helps me at Best Buy, they make a difference. Again, I don’t necessarily want to have beers with them. But they’re my go-to people for these companies. I trust them, respect them, depend on them and like them. That makes a difference. Now, granted… commodity products like toilet paper might seem like a stretch. But if the Charmin community manager is pretty engaging and fun, I might switch to that brand just because of the interactions I have with him. It’s kind of how I became a fan of Bruce’s Yams. And I recommend it to my friends now too.
Here’s the magic sauce, Shel: Acquisition is traditional marketing. Relationships don’t matter there. It’s all awareness and carrot. But development and retention, those two can be deeply impacted by the kind of relationship customers feel they have with certain businesses (and dare I say “brands”). Social Media can help accelerate the development of these relationships and help extend them to 1st and 2nd degree networks.
If it’s faked, it doesn’t work. Bu the genuine stuff works, both online and offline.
Does that make sense?
Of course I understand this. Remember, I began my first comment by agreeing with your overall premise. And, I’ve been writing, speaking, and consulting about this myself for years.
However, the marketplace is a complex, diverse, and nuanced place. It’s not as simple as “build relationships.” It’s not a one-size-fits-all environment.
I find it interesting that your examples are (a) small businesses, (b) local, and (c) places where you have established face-to-face, in-person relationships. I, too, give my business to shops where the staff has build that kind of relationship with me. On the other hand, look at the example of my dry cleaners. The owners are parents of kids who went to school with my daughter. We had very nice conversations whenever I dropped off or picked up the cleaning. With multiple options nearby, I continued to patronize this establishment. Then, one day, they couldn’t handle an emergency job so I figured just the once, I’ll try a competitor. The competitor turned out to be closer to my house. Their system is computerized, which makes the whole transaction faster. And they deliver! Despite the relationship at the place I’d bee going for years, I now do business at the place that’s more convenient.
The relationship was a secondary consideration.
And so it is with many of the larger businesses with which we engage both on and offline. Businesses like airlines, hospitals, mobile phone service providers, cable TV operators, and computer makers will benefit hugely from building strong relationships, “flipping the funnel” to focus more on retention than acquisition. (See? I do already get this.)
However, when I go to the grocery store with paper towels on my shopping list, any relationship I may have with Brawny (which, let’s face it, is likely to be none) will be a lower priority than the fact that the store has a special on Bounty for fifty cents less. Regardless of the relationship McDonald’s has built with me, I’ll still go to In ‘N Out when I’m near one because their burgers are tastier. Starbucks may have build strong relationsips with customers over the years, but they’re still abandoning Starbucks for lower-priced premium coffee drinks at McDonald’s. The fact that Toyota has had a strong relationship with me for years won’t keep me from buying a Ford now that Toyota’s quality has deteriorated and a dramatically improved Ford vehicle has become the object of my desire.
Ford’s outstanding social media efforts, by the way, have less to do with building relationships than heightening awareness of the staggering improvements the company has made in its products since the Big Three U.S. auto manufacturers hit bottom a few years back.
There also are companies like Zappos.com that build strong relationships, but relationships are an outcome, not a goal. The goal is to deliver WOW service. It’s the customer service — the vast majority of which is handled over telephones, not social media — that results in repeat business and peer recommendations.
Then there’s Apple, a company notorious for its lack of relationship building (other than the Genuius Bar, which I usually find staffed by snotty and only semi-helpful geniuses), yet its products fly off the shelves because they are cool and because the Apple cult perpetuates the world’s strongest buzz.
So again, I’m not dismissing or minimizing the importance of building relationsips. In fact, I endorse the concept and advise my clients to pursue it. I’m just saying that relationships are not necessarily the top motivator in every case, in every sector, with every product. Social media should be used to build relationships, either as a primary or secondary goal, depending on the nature of the business or brand. When the relationship is not the core motivator, however, social media works perfectly well — when executed authentically, genuinely, transparently, and strategically — in achieving other primary goals, like keeping people informed of specials and coupons, raising awareness, spreading the word about quality or other brand dimensions, executing a short-term campaign, and a host of other ends to which social media can be the means.
I’m also saying that there are degrees of relationships, strong ties and weak ties, that produce different types of outcomes.
I’m saying that the kumbaya mantra of “relationships relationships relationships” is overly simplistic and simply doesn’t apply to every case, every time.
Make sense?
It makes perfect sense. I think we agree. 🙂
Interesting that you noticed the small/local business thing in my examples. It’s the key to all this. Big biz needs to think and act like small biz. Doing this is a lot easier with social media than it was before. So to me, the point isn’t to be social for the sake of being social and “have conversations” just because… you have to fill these new channels with content, but to use “social” to scale the depth usually found in small business relationships to the big business world.
Now… just because it can’t be done doesn’t mean it is being done. Most of what I see is still complete bullshit, with “conversations” being contrived and worthless, and “engagement” being little more than fluffy marketing. So, we’re a long way from where this could take us, for sure.
Thanks for leaving these great comments on the blog, Shel. I’ve been a fan for a while, so this is kind of a treat. 🙂
Great post. Damn, wish I’d written it. I’ve said it so many times, it’s become something of a mantra: In the tortoise vs. hare world of marketing communications, social media is the tortoise, not the hare. In other words: Businesses need to look at social media tactics as part of an overall communications strategy that focuses on building for the long term.
Fantastic article Olivier! The illustrations are very simple and great, and I may use them – like @Shannon Paul & @Blake Cahill – as well (with all due credit).
The point I like most was when you finally got into the idea of building social equity and using campaigns to drive a larger strategy.
I particularly like this piece from your article:
“The business is using social media not only to acquire new customers or trigger a spike in business, but to retain customers as well, to develop them into active community participants, loyal repeat customers, thereby increasing their buy rate, transaction yield, and their reach into lateral networks through organic word of mouth. In this model, campaigns are merely marketing microcycles of attention in a larger growth strategy focusing on building customer relationships.”
Currently, my social media work with clients consists of me trying to break their preconceived notions that it’s one flat campaign with one goal – more conversions. This strategy almost never fails to disappoint.
Instead, I’m trying to push them to the idea of building equity and relationships with their circle of influence. It may not “make the sale” right away, but over time it will foster a trust that could lead to many, many sales (or whatever conversion metric you want to insert).
This was the best article I have read in a long time.
Thank you for this blog. Thats all I can say. You most definitely have made this blog into something thats eye opening and important. You clearly know so much about the subject, youve covered so many bases. Great stuff from this part of the internet. Again, thank you for this blog.
Random question: I know you are using WordPress for this blog, but have you tried any other platforms? I am trying to decide whether to use WordPress or BlogEngine and I ask because I like yours.
Holy cow! I guess I have to stop blogging and listen to what you had preached!:) Social or no-social, it is media after all! The problem with marketing through these kinds of tools is that; you may be well known or got a high page ranking on the search sites but still you can’t interact with your clients, still, as you say, what happens then? Still back to the same old business! Must have a good marketing strategy..ooh! I guess I talked to much, I don’t know where I am going. Might as well sleep and think about it tomorrow or the other day. My point is to take care of the clients by satisfying their every need and it will surely return to satisfy your business.
Sherman Unkefer
I have to say, the article was awesome it confirmed a lot of conflict I had with “social media marketing” vs. “social media management” vs. “customer relationship management”. Clearly what I got out of it was we are breaking new ground and each business is as individual as the campaigns should be for them based on their goals. The overall success of social media services should incorporate short term and long term goals and incremental growth of “campaigns” based on small successes.
I have to say I got so much out of these comments and the interaction between Shel and yourself enlightening!
It made me think about the ads of old. Mr Whipple the face of Charmin. A whole nation put a face to a brand and felt they knew him personally. The lonely Maytag Repairman, “Where’s the Beef” and “Time to make the donuts” were all a way to help consumers identify a personality to a brand. If I understand you, seems social media done right is about to incorporate that.
Yep. That’s exactly right. 🙂
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I just started to read this book but I can tell you already that it should be required reading for any B2B company, especially for folks in upper management. The funny thing is I found this book totally by accident, which was a pleasant surprise. I went to Barnes and Noble looking for some books on other business topics and I happen to see this one on an end cap. Frankly, I was actually a bit shocked as it never crossed my mind that there might already be a book out on this subject. I assumed it would be another 3 years or so for a book of its nature to appear, if it ever did.
Anyone who has been involved in social media for the past few years, whether for business or pleasure, already knows the value of it however what’s not apparent at first is how it may apply to B2B relationships. Not only does this book put your mind at ease on the value of such interactions it also provides great examples. The section on ROI is one of the first chapters I read and the authors really did a great job on covering this topic. ROI has always been a tough topic in relation to social media but they tackled it better than anyone I’ve seen so far.
I cannot wait to finish reading the whole book!
I agree companies, and more specifically marketing departments, can get obsessed with campaigns while forgetting about the ongoing effort that should be there all the time.
This is more relevant to advertising, or marketing in general though.
No-one does social media only during campaigns.
Wow, this article is an eye-opener, to be honest i am quite shaken. Maybe i need more proof on your claim regarding social media networking</b.