I just ran across this insightful article about the myths of social media at BusinessWeek, and it got me thinking. Ochman lists six myths, but they’re easily broken into two categories: ease and cost. It’s true that people tend to think that a social media campaign will be easy and inexpensive to operate, but why?
The answer is because they’re looking at it from the perspective of traditional build-and-blast marketing, where you create your message, buy your media vehicle, and distribute. The costs in this model are all up front: you have the creative development, of course, and the media buy. And then you wait. (Well, honestly, there’s always something to do, but you get my point.)
From this perspective, it’s “easier” to create a Facebook page instead of, say, a microsite, and “cheap” because there’s virtually no media buy. But there’s something missing. If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know that one of my mantras has been “Participate!” And though I’m simplifying a bit, this is the crux of the issue: social media keeps up-front costs down, but it puts more weight on sustained, continual involvement and on leveraging the assets in all distribution media.
So the maxim “measure twice and cut once” is key, and planning how you intend to distribute is absolutely necessary. For example, Juniper Networks recently announced the new Juniper Networks by leveraging and promoting marketing assets and press content via manyl the Social Channels including: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Juniper Community, Flicker, and the Juniper.net and a microsite - TheNewNetworkisHere.com. Oh yeah, and don’t forget the normal press release translated around the world and a few e-mails and Google to boot.
As you can see, in addition to expertise, this involvement requires time, great planning, and yes, money. The fact is, there is nothing simple or automated about a social media campaign because the premise is about engagement, authenticity, and integrity. An effective social media program or campaign requires strategic planning, launching, monitoring, integration, optimization, and foremost, participation.
Now, this isn’t to say that money can’t be saved (e.g., print advertising was removed from the equation so not a big placement cost). There are as many, if not more, opportunities as there are challenges. But I think, first and foremost, companies should enter into a social media strategy with a realistic perspective on what it takes to be effective—I’d narrow it down to three critical things: planning experience, resources, and knowing what targets you want to reach.
What do you think it takes? Keep me honest 
Tags: Best Practices, Easy, Free, Social Media Myths, Social Media Strategy, Sustained Involvement
I think that the biggest myth of social media is the same for most digital and offline media when you look at them as tactical solutions rather than in the context of an overall digital marketing strategy.
If you have a Facebook page to write up your achievements and handle discussions and a Twitter page to broadcast where your thoughts can be found you may very well build up an audience and spend a lot of time interacting with them in exactly the right ways but are you making sales? I always say that running an online business is fundamentally no different to running a little corner shop. You need it to be open, and for people passing by to see that it is open, you need to be helpful and honest, you need to be busy as that persuades everyone else that the wisdom of crowds is right and you are the place to shop, but you also need to be focused.
A shopkeeper in my grannies village knew that if he spent all day just chatting the world away with a few people who come into the shop but buy nothing was not as important as spotting a customer and leading them through to a sale. The danger with social media is that you end up doing the equivalent of this and spend a lot of time discussing things whilst missing out on the customer in the corner who is desperate to buy something, but needs a little help. Recognise buying signals and remember that 20% of your customers will purchase 80% of your products.
I couldn’t agree with you more, Aaron. Many B2B organizations still use social media only as a broadcast tool. Although this can be helpful for levels of awareness, it can also easily become a level of white noise. The key is to understanding how to leverage Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, as tools of engagement – yes, just another set of tools as part of the integrated marketing mix. The really key is how do you “listen” to the customer to move the buying process forward.
I think you’ll find garyvaynerchuk’s keynote at Mediabistro has the very same sentiment, but with far more color and few more explicatives than I am willing to provide.
What are your thoughts on target usages like event tweet ups or product promotions?