I’ve been writing about Social Media as far as I can remember. If you go through my about me page, then one thing would be certain that by profession I’m into or onto social media. So basically what I mean is I do understand what is social media – what’s the use of it – where to use it- how to use it along it measure it (effectively) and blah blah blah. Now one disclaimer though – this post is not to give the panacea you’ve been looking for!
But lets get back to practicality – what the heck is social media? As in, what’s the practical implication and application part of it. Even Marta Kagan did an interesting slideshow on it with the F word. And most importantly, have we ever asked the question as an end-user of this ubiquitous medium – Does any company really really wants to hang
out with me?
If you talk about social media then most people who understand it would say that its about engagement and making conversations which will lead to dialogue and hence may be (I mean may be) lead to sales or as we marketers like to put it as the most-fake sought after word called ROI.
Now, I would request you to just concentrate on the above sentence – words like engagement, conversations, dialogue, leads, sales and ROI is what you might have seen (if you’re a client) or put in jazzy ppt’s if you’re an agency.
Fair enough. Whatever sells. I agree. But now does that really help? Both from client or agency perspective. yeah, I can hear from far distance that someone said yes, it helped. I agree with you too. But short sell is what agencies are doing and clients are buying. It’s a vicious circle if you ask me. Clients blame agencies for not being creative enough with their social media strategy and agencies blame clients for not having balls to try out something new.
Now in that case, I don’t want to make my hands dirty with this post. Will reserse my zest for some other post.
But I’ve one really really important question from an end user perspective. Does any company really really wants to hang out with me?
Here’s an story if you’ve some time to read i.e.
Imagine you have a crush on a girl at the bank.
Every time you talk, it’s only business.
But one day she says, “Here’s my cellphone number. Call anytime.”
Wow! She likes you!
You call her and ask her out. She says OK.
You meet up for dinner and after talking for 15 minutes she says, “Could I interest you in a home equity loan?”
Arrgh! That’s worse than if she had never given you her number in the first place!
The fact that she only wants to talk about her business proves that not only is she not interested in you, but she was trying to trick you.
Now you’re insulted and will never go to that bank again, or at least never believe it when they pretend to care about you.
This is what’s happening with most companies’ “Social Media Strategy”.
They’re acting like they want to connect directly with you, get to know you, or hang out where you hang out.
But unless they learn how to stop selling, listen, and be real – they’re just permanently alienating potential crushes.
Sums it right huh. If you think for the last year or so how many brands (small or large) have tried to connect with you via Facebook or Twitter and then you never heard from them shows the real case study.
So there’s the disconnect. It’s not that we are not creative enough or don’t have balls. It’s a shift – a big shift – shift in the mindset of how things work now and should work if you’re at all interested to take your brand to the customer next door.
P.S. I could have changed the story from the actual one; but really would it have made more sense. I think you got my point right!
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Great post Sampad. You've hit the chord right. There truly is a disconnect of how brands look at social media. And the point u've raised here with this post is the disconnect.
Yes. Sampad, Totally agreed Boss. Your Post gives a right strike to the tricky marketers. I appreciate your approach. Its high time now, before Indian Brands try to exploit Social Media. Very Good post
Thanks Bhanu. Appreciate it!
Cheers
@Sampad
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Sampad,
This post is superb real-time analysis of todays social media buzz. gr8 post.
I always wondered about this! cos i hardly remember clicking on any promotional link on any of my social media sites. Still wondering how this all works???
It surely does! But we have to put creativity (the element of surprise to connect positively & engage) as one of the most important armor to deal with this.
Just think about how creative most of Indian brands have been in social media realm. I bet very very few. And on the hindsight, the social media campaigns we talk about, hear about the most, all use creativity to the greatest extent to reach out & connect. But there's one obvious caveat though.
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Amazing analogy mate. Just wondering then what should be done from brand's perspective if such is the case with social media marketing?
It is then complete nuisance for any brand to connect with consumer since at the end of the day, the consumer believes that you're gonna trick her.
Understand what is your TG is one probable solution to ur question before one indulges himself with social media. Right>
hey ,i was goin thru esinps.were is the HBR folder u uploaded??hv u removed it.can u tell me hw i can get latest HBR articles without purchasing them??!!
Yeah I do remember doing it in my PG days. If you can shoot me an email at sampad[at]sampadswain.com with the mention of which articles you're looking for, then may be I can help. Better still send me the link of those articles (if any).
So true, Sampad. Amazing story. It truly shows what I feel everyday when some other brand tries to connect with me and I knw those a**holes are trying to seduce me to sell some of their sleazy products.
I think social media is only right for certain brands. Some brands people don't want to build up relationships with. On Facebook for example, people like to follow brands that they feel say something positive about them. Cool and luxury brands seem to get lots of followers.
Otherwise brands need to provide some sort of motivation for social media users to engage with them. Innovative content or the premise of money off for example.
Read this TechCrunch story – http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/28/facebook-fan…
You've said it right. Facebook is not for all brands. Today I read this http://is.gd/56OoH where it says that 77% of fan pages have fewer than 1,000 fans.
I like the metaphor you chose a lot. I'm working on a post now taking it one step further called 'The Social Media Landgrab.' Basically, everyone wants to be on social media because they fear missing the boat even if they don't really know what it means.
How daring! You combined ROI and social media in the same blog post. I think many companies hesitate to jump on the social media bandwagon because they dont find the return they’re looking for. They ask, "How can I measure ROI in a social strategy?" Until marketers can better answer this than say it leads to brand awareness and engagement, companies will continue to hesitate. I'm not saying they should hesitate, just that they will.