A warning to social media mavens
Warning: If you’re a social media maven or guru then you’re either going to get all pissy about this article or you’re going to wise up and make a difference. Sensibilities may be damaged. Proceed with caution.
With so many social media mavens and gurus out there we should be up to our eyeballs in content that actually offers rich and actionable insight. Instead we’re still wading through a stagnant swamp of “here’s how to Twitter” and “it’s about the conversation” articles.
You’d think they’d be able to give something of more value, right? I mean, they are “gurus” and “mavens” after all.
Who needs fundamentals anyway?
Somehow, though, folks thought the fundamentals of marketing could be tossed out the window as if people no longer responded to the same things we’ve responded to for the past thousand some odd years. Oh, wait, we are in a new age… we’re in 2.0.
We’re in 2.0 where our fascination with celebrity climbed to new heights because now everybody can be a celebrity. That also means we have a landscape populated by Paris Hiltons… and self-appointed maestros of media.
These folks are actually doing more harm than good by evangelizing social media as a tool that they themselves don’t fully understand…
“Engage with people and they’ll come.”
If you have half a business mind you know that’s pure B.S. Frankly, I think the reason so many “marketers” evangelize social media is because they’re really not any good at marketing but are damn good at talking.
Waiter, there’s marketing in my media
Wait, I can hear the argument somewhere that marketing has no place in social media. Look, I’m not excited about MLM or “internet cash now” pitches either but if you think social media and marketing are two separate entities then you’ve got your head in the sand.
Social media has made everyone a marketer. If they’re not promoting a product or service then they’re hawking an idea or their own personality. So, get past the hangup that “marketing is a sin”.
It’s also time to get past the honeymoon glow and get down to creating what you really want out of your social media experience.
If you just want to chew the fat with folks, then that’s cool. This article isn’t for you.
The purpose of engagement
However, if you want to leverage social media for your business then you’ve got to move beyond “let’s engage” and other elementary concepts and instead engage with purpose.
Do that and you’ll learn a heck of a lot more than you can from the current crop of social media “how to”. You’ll be a lot more successful, too. And far more deserving of a “guru” title than most of the ones regurgitating the tips flung across the net.
The question I want to raise is “what do you want out of your social media?”
Are you working to make that happen? Why hasn’t that happened yet? Are you following fundamentals or going about it willy-nilly?
One last thing to think about comes from the article Social Media Fails To Manifest As Marketing Medium, Report Likens Twitter To TiVo: More Hype Than Reality.
The most important sentence in that article is at the end:
Social media “is less a way to directly reach customers, and more a way to reach passionate voices who may influence perceptions of your brand.”
