My boss at my current internship at JDPR asked me a question today that I thought I’d pose to you:
Is social media–the blogging, the monitoring, the analytics–really cheaper than other forms of marketing/PR or is it just a new way of using a lot of man power and a lot of time?
I have heard a lot of comments lately, in the blogosphere and face-to-face, from people who seem to think social media is the fix for their marketing woes, and they do not seem to realize that strategy and time are as much a part of it as with any other medium. What do you think? Is social media easy street? Or, does maximizing its potential mean hard work by people who know what they’re doing just like traditional methods?
6 responses so far ↓
finalspin // February 28, 2009 at 3:49 am |
Sure, any organization can put together a successful global social media campaign by hiring a bunch of starving high-school students and invest whatever is left from holiday party budget.
Yeah, sure….
Social media may be cheaper than advertizing, but it still requires significant resources to be successful. People will get hooked by the spiffy video, the cool website, the blogging celebrity.
Social media opens up whole new ways to reach people, but you need to have something interesting to show them, and give them the means to interact with it. If all you’ve got is a text message saying ‘Widget X is the best – buy it now!’, sending it on 250 million cell phones might not do much for sales.
You will succeed if you put resources, talent, skills to it. Do it on the cheap – watch it whither, die and damage your brand.
And… social media is like that great multi-head screwdriver I’ve got. It’s wonderful, but it’s still just one tool in the box. In most cases, social media needs to be used as part of a larger PR campaign, with advertizing, media relations, event management, stakeholder relations or all of those. If the firm you intern in doesn’t grasp integrated PR, I suggest you try to find another internship.
tiffanysellers // February 28, 2009 at 11:05 pm |
I agree with you completely. Social media is a new strategy for integrated PR, not a get-rich-quick scheme. Firms need to be willing to spend the resources to do it right. However, a problem I have run into is clients who think social media is cheap and therefore think they should be able to grow their business/reputation/etc. at no expense to them.
prprofmv // March 4, 2009 at 6:42 pm |
Social media is no easy street. It’s like a marriage: easy to get started, hard to maintain. Social media engagement requires long time commitment and a lot of time & effort in the long run.
tiffanysellers // March 5, 2009 at 5:58 pm |
I like the marriage analogy. I think pre-marriage counseling is a must, too, though most people seem to skip straight to elopement! I think this thread might be inspiring a follow-up post…
Kelly // March 11, 2009 at 6:23 pm |
If the strategy is pursued because of its ease and based on the easy methods, it will be self-defeating because (and I think this is already happening) the chorus of marketing grows louder with every new company launching that strategy. There are a lot of people using Twitter, FB and others, but you can only be as effective reaching them as you are effective at getting through their filter. The audience is large but each individual only allows so much through each channel (a blog, a product site, twitter, FB etc) they monitor. As I follow more people/marketing accounts on Twitter, for example, I’m seeing fewer and fewer of them, percentage-wise. If the strategy is based on how to get people’s attention who are very effective at filtering messages (the part that takes a lot of work because it really is about relationship building), it will have lasting effectiveness.
tiffanysellers // March 11, 2009 at 8:45 pm |
Kelly, I love what you’re saying about the more people you follow the less updates you see. I feel like that sums up the social media game right now: The more people jump on board a medium that is working for someone else, the quicker that medium becomes too cluttered for it to be simple and effective. That’s why strategy is SO important…just because social media is a “creative solution” doesn’t mean it is creative all by itself. It still requires human minds willing to invest and work at, like Dr. V’s marriage analogy.