Mostly.
EDIT: And when I say “mostly”, I mean marketing ultimately focused on getting people to buy stuff. Not on changing opinion, not on awareness. It’s a deliberately narrow definition for the purposes of this post.
I’m going to try to be concise as I put this out there for your amusement. I say this as I’m inclined to go off on a ranty diatribe about this as I have strong feelings about it. It’s also the position I think I’ll be taking at the second SMC Sydney that I’m part of the panel for next Monday night.
I’ve been working with collaborative projects and communities of common interest for a long time now. In one way, shape or form, I’d hazard about 10 years. In terms of working with and using the tools and classes of software we’re now calling social media – wikis, blogs, social networks, ideas markets, and their various predecessors – I’ve got more than a little experience as a user and implementer of them throughout my career.
Because of this experience, I have well-formed views about what the greatest benefit these tools can offer are. And it’s not in marketing.
Let me start with a a definitive statement.
I’m not anti-marketing. I’m not even anti social media marketing. But collectively the selling component of marketing is possibly the least interesting thing about social media.
In fact, there are some incredibly smart people who work in marketing and really, really understand social media and its benefits. They are trying hard to make a difference. You know who you are (I have my own little list in my head).
But there’s a long way to go before the marketing industry as a whole really gets social media.
I think it’s great that we can measure around community engagement with social media campaigns. However, as someone who’s worked with communities and social software a lot longer than the marketing industry has had its knickers in a twist about it, I find it more than a little amusing that the industry often seems to think that their business is what social media is all about.
Wake up people!
It’s not about how JOO CAN SELL MOAR STUFFZ!!!!!!!
It’s not about eyeballs.
Finding the connectors on Facebook and giving them a video camera and a Summer’s worth of beer does not a connected, nurtured, collaborative community make.
What social media is about is the community. It’s about how much you actually care for them. About how much you connect with them and nurture them. It’s about how much that ties in to your larger, long term business strategy. It’s about innovation and sharing and empowerment and knowledge and building something sustainable over the long term. It’s about people and the way they come together do do something more than they could alone.
And there are few social media marketing campaigns I’ve seen that do much, if any, of that. They scratch around the edges. They say the right words but they have dead eyes.
As a pragmatic Cluetrainer, I get the feeling that most campaigns that seek to incorporate social media wouldn’t know the Cluetrain if it ran up and whacked them upside the head.
Of course, this is all just one person’s view. Your mileage may vary (and I hope it does).
Mostly.
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It is about enabling a community, standing back and letting them achieve their goals. I guess the marketing aspect for this comes from professional organisations helping add value to the community, and helping enable them to achieve those goals. The community is focused on one thing, and it isn’t buying stuff from fairweather contirbutors.
“What social media is about is the community. It’s about how much you actually care for them. About how much you connect with them and nurture them. It’s about how much that ties in to your larger, long term business strategy. It’s about innovation and sharing and empowerment and knowledge and building something sustainable over the long term. It’s about people and the way they come together do do something more than they could alone.”
I’m not sure this is just more than fluff … it seems to be about everything but sales. Take the warm fuzzy rhetoric out and I’m not sure what the takeout is.
Who is fitting the bill for these collaborative, nurtured communities? How do you measure whether it’s a diligent use of funds and the same money couldn’t deliver a better result using another form of comms?
Like it or not generally marketing budgets are set either quarterly or yearly and the allocation of this budget generally needs to cause an effect within the quarter allocated. This is a reality and I can’t see it changing.
What that in mind there must be a middle ground between immediate sales/return and this longer term view.
BTW this line ‘But there’s a long way to go before the marketing industry as a whole really gets social media’ is pretty patronising to people that work in the marketing industry. How do you know this or is it just a feeling? Does it mean they don’t ‘get’ it … or they don’t ‘agree’ with you?
Ben, I don’t immediately know who you are or where you are from (you didn’t provide a URL, and I can’t tell from your IP address). That said, you weren’t hard to track down. Here’s my response.
It’s certainly more than fluff. And proved time and again in accessible corporate case studies about building community. The Harley-Davidson one I linked to is just one, well-documented example. We can see others going on every day. And there are tangible, measurable dollars associated with them. Social media, for some, is proving to be a real benefit – both internally amongst staff and in terms of connecting to expertise and opinion beyond company walls, improving engagement, innovation, knowledge retention and R&D among other factors.
My statement is based on observation, research and experience – both here and overseas. It’s not a new concept – people who have much higher recognition levels and reputation than me have been saying it in one form or another for more than 10 years. My position on all this stuff is well-established.
I read the study reported in a downloadable (free) whitepaper on Social Media Today as providing some evidence from the field to support what you say, Steve. http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/99991 . And among other things it says blogging is quite highly valued in business (still, or more).
Agree with you in theory Trib. But the fact is that many Aussie businesses aren’t ready to make the quantam leap into a full social engagement.
It’s also tough to judge a campaign without seeing the brief. I’m currently in the process of responding to a brief specifically requesting a campaign focus. From the exterior the campaign may look superficial, but it meets the brief.
So the aim is to lead the client down a path. Baby steps first though. Implement the campaign and begin to enlighten the client. Plant the appropriate seeds in terms of education so that one day they can be converted across to longer term strategic initiatives.
So, James, I task you and me, and people that think like us, to only put proposals that take the long view, that really focus on building something more than immediate sales, in front of clients. That’s what it might take to change the world. That, and making them read stuff like Cluetrain (with a careful, “use as much or as little of this as makes sense” applied).
The first lesson in marketing is “Marketing is not advertising.” Advertising is about eyeballs and perceptions and trying to get people to buy more stuff. Marketing is making stuff that people actually want to buy. It’s about listening and researching to find out what people want and then working out how to give it to them. The Harley Davidson case study is a good example of marketing. But, at the end of the day, they are doing what they do because they found it sells more stuff and would not continue to do it if they didn’t see a result. The idea that the community caused Harley Davidson produce better products is self delusional at best. Harley Davidson make better products because they practice some very basic marketing techniques.
Dean, of course Harley’s community is about selling more product. But it takes the long view (a very long view). And it’s not just about selling.
The Hog community has been around a hell of a long time and it’s integral to the way Harley does things. They make a point of nurturing it and caring for its members in many ways.
This sort of behavior is what I’m trying to encourage in the people I talk to about community building, social media and the benefits around it – whether that community is completely internal to an organisation (like the community that was supposed to exist in the company we both once worked for), or between a company and its community (of users, innovators, fans or whatever).
My entire point in this post is that, as I say, sales-linked marketing is possibly the least interesting thing about social media, in spite of what the spin suggests.
Stephen,
I agree with you about the need to take the long view on social media.
There’s too many “consultants” rushing into this space with promises of instant success, yet when you dig deeper into what they are saying or offering, they offer nothing in terms of strategy or proper enterprise integration/involvement. And fewer still understand the need to examine the company’s culture. How far away from openness, collaboration, or community is the culture of the organisation?
These are the tough challenges for a company to tackle.
Mark
Mark, thanks for the comment and glad you agree. Yes, they are tough challenges. And with the right approach, they can be beaten.
There’s too much focus on quick results…
I’m not saying it can’t be of benefit – I’m asking who pays for it and how you attribute it.
Case studies are great but I’m not sure they provide the foundation you feel they do.
“My position on all this stuff is well-established.”
I don’t feel like you’ve really answered any of my points. And I stand by the comment that your sweeping statement about marketers not getting social media (I assume you do though, yes) is probably too broad and a little smug.
Ben, what I’m saying is payment and attribution of benefits to organisations isn’t necessarily linked to sales. The empirical evidence and research all bear that out.
It’s certainly the case in my direct experience with clients as well as in the research I undertake.
As for my comment, it speaks to the industry as a whole. I do note, however, that there are organisations and individuals doing great work.
And, yes, I do understand social media. I have an established reputation here and overseas as someone who really does get it.
All great points to inspire debate and passionate responses. Looking forward to Social Media Club Sydney and the live panel discussion.
it is a sad state if the biggest benefit of social media is marketing. the fact that we call it “social media marketing” already puts down that slope. for most people, the biggest direct and tangible benefit is sales. that’s what marketers, companies and budgets are driven on.
but there has to be a greater benefit for social media which u have highlighted. communities of people with common interests, collaboration, brand building, connecting with customers.
we have to get away from a campaign driven mentality and look for a longer term approach. i agree with James, its starts with baby steps and for us to educate clients and the general community of the wider benefits of social media.
I completely agree with the comments that social media needs to take the long term view. But why can’t it take a short view at the same time? Why does it have to be an “or” proposition instead of an “and” proposition?
They are ot mutually exclusive focuses, I feel it needs to be a 50:50 balance.
@ Dean Cording .. be still my beating heart for the man talks of marketing theory. You are right on a few points. Trib, you are too. But don’t lose sight of the fact HD would absolutely use the community to test products, float ideas and conduct research – that’s the short term view – and it is absolutely focused on sales. The long term view is they want to be part of the community and help build it.
They feed each other.
If social media doesn’t provide a benefit for a company then they will not use it. Simply contributing to a community won’t cut it. It’s about selling for the company. It’s not about selling for everyone else. Trib, surely you would agree that you blog, tweet etc because it helps build your profile and helps you get gigs? (a short term view – sure it isn’t your only one).
Think past the transaction step in a sale and think post-purchase evaluation. This is what inspired m post on my own blog on this subject tonight.
Loved the post by the way Stephen