Social Media Marketing: Is it really worth the effort?
Social Media Marketing: Is it really worth the effort? – An argument for and against using Social Media for your business.
News Flash: Social Media is huge. Today, Facebook has over 300 million subscribers and Twitter is the new Associated Press. In the world of digital marketing, social media marketing (SMM) is the subject de jour and the interest seems to be doubling on a daily basis. Last week a google search on “The benefits of social marketing” returned 124 million results, today, that number is 181 million – a growth of over 8 million pages per day.
There is no question that there is significant hype surrounding this subject and how it can be leveraged in the world of business. With that said, there are also some convincing arguments why social marketing may not be such a great marketing tool for your business.
Here is a list of 4 reasons for and against you and your company adding social media marketing into the mix. Read, consider & decide.
Reasons For Social Media: -
1. It’s free! – Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks require no funding. In contrast, almost all other forms of advertising and marketing efforts require some kind of fee.
2. Simple & convenient to set-up and maintain – Regardless of your level of web-savvyness, social networks make it very quick and simple to set-up, customize, manage & maintain your profile. This profile lists crucial information about your business. Providing you have access to a computer, you can be a part of social media.
3. Buzz! – Unlike outbound marketing efforts such as traditional advertising, social networks not only allow customers to provide feedback to organizations, they actively encourage it. Interaction, engagement and sharing are all parts of social media, which if utilized in the correct way can lead to viral exposure, trust, customer loyalty, free market research and brand growth.
4. Volume – As mentioned at the top of this article, Facebook has over 300 million active users globally and still growing face. Other Social networks can also boast extreme levels of popularity, with Twitter unique user levels growing by over 700% in 2008. Only Myspace is showing any signs of a decline in numbers.
Reasons Against Social Media: -
1. Infancy of medium – Social media is still very much the baby of marketing platforms. Despite the theories and the buzz, where are the actual case studies? Most of us have heard recently that Dell Computers have generated $3 million of revenue through twitter. That’s great, but there don’t seem to be too many others. Some big brands such as Adidas, Starbucks, Pringles and Coca-cola are often sited as shining examples of the use of social media, but really, how many pairs of sneakers have Adidas actually shifted as of a result of having a popular fan page on Facebook? How many bums are Twitter really putting on Jet Blue’s seats? How many additional cans of soda are flying off the shelf because Coke has 3.5 million Facebook fans?
Another worrying statistic for social media marketers is a recent report from Consumer information company, Knowledge Networks, saying that while 83% of the Internet population (ages 13 – 54) participates in some way with “social media”, less than 5% turn to social sites for advice pertaining to a purchase decision.
By no means am I suggesting that social media cannot have a positive impact on your business, there is just very little proof that it does.
2. Blog’s don’t write themselves – Social Media Marketing requires resources. Resources that many smaller companies simply do not have. It takes time and time is money. Like SEO, there is no media cost attached to SMM which makes the prospect very appealing, but frequently creating content for your blog, maintaining your Facebook fan page or group, sending out tweets, participating in discussions on LinkedIn and recording videos for You Tube all very labor intensive activities.
3. Social networks hate spam – Social media is a place where brands have conversations. It’s a place where a company can build trust and relationships with existing and potential customers. The problem is that as networks become increasingly popular, spammers and commercially aggressive marketers are becoming rife and unavoidable. The big problem with this is that unless Facebook, Twitter and other popular networks address the issue, users will leave just as soon as they arrived. The other problem is that those that just see social networks as a free advertising platform are tarnishing the reputation of others that are genuinely adding value and engaging with customers.
4. Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword – In late 2004, blogger Jeff Jarvis purchased a new laptop from Dell Computers. After a series of very negative experiences with Dell’s customer service department, Jarvis decided to publish his complaints on the infamous blog, “Dell Hell”. Jarvis’ posts soon caught the attention of others who also began to add their own negative experiences with Dell’s customer service. Before long “Dell Hell” caught the attention of the mainstream media. As a result of the bad press and Dell Inc.’s failure to respond on the issue, the computer giant’s sales and stellar reputation started to freefall.
The point is this; Buzz is not always positive and unless you continuously monitor response and engage in damage limitation, before you know it you can be face-to-face with a monster that will be hard to beat!
To conclude, social media is a great tool for businesses to market themselves, but only if done right. Before you go down the social road, it’s crucial to figure out a coherent strategy and stick to it. It’s important to consider exactly who you’re looking to target, how you’re going to target them, what you’re hoping to achieve and how you will measure success. If you don’t do this, marketing through social networks will become an overwhelming and impossible task where you will fail to make a significant footprint or provide a valuable offering to potential customers. It’s true, Social Media Marketing is extremely labor intensive, and therefore you need to consider what resources you have available and how much time you can give to your social efforts without adversely effecting productivity. You may also have to consider if this marketing effort is best kept in-house or outsource to an agency with some expertise in this field.
It’s true that there are very few examples of how social media has positively impacted the bottom-line of businesses, however, I am convinced that given a little time, these case studies will begin to emerge.
The final point to take away is that social network is not meant to compensate for a poor product or an inept customer service. If there is an issue with your product or service, be careful because social media will slap you right in the face.
By keeping focus on your objectives and considering the points laid out in this article, it’s not only possible to survive in social media marketing, it’s likely that you will thrive.
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Comments
John Blossom
Good post, strategy is indeed the key to social media success. It’s a medium unto itself, and as such its use requires a media strategy. While I agree that sometimes small businesses can be challenged to do social media effectively, in general its cost-effectiveness for building market influence makes social media in many ways a natural for SMBs to get the attention of key clients and market influencers in ways that traditional media fails to do. Most importantly, social media can create a 24×7 market conversation, which can open doors to building trust in the marketplace that can make more sales-oriented efforts more effective. Sales can work well through social media if done right, as well – you can’t spam, but Dell’s ability to promote immediate offers for merchandise on Twitter yielded them over $3 million in new revenues. Bottom line: use social media to reach people as you would like to reach them in real life and to treat them as they’d like to be treated in real life. Traditional media is still important, but social media is now essential to any marketing efforts that want to build effective brands and client relationships.
Lauren Lekai
I appreciate many of your points especially that social networking will not work for companies producing poor quality products and services. Your customers will clobber you! Which brings up the concept that in this new marketing environment, Web 2.0, companies’ true colors will be exposed. This is good news for the consumer and companies who consistently deliver great products and services.
Another point you bring up is that it’s important to consider exactly who you’re looking to target, how you’re going to target them, what you’re hoping to achieve and how you will measure success.
We have an SEO method using video that generates targeted leads on the web using a very specific process that embraces Social Media Marketing. Why pay for TV commercials that are shown infrequently, are expensive, when you can have your videos, podcasts, etc. available 24/7 as your highly effective sales force that reaches your targeted audience where, when and how “they”, not the TV station, decides. This is so new that I have not updated our website…hope to make progress this weekend. Anyone else notice that there are not enough hours in the day?
John Blossom
Lauren,
Good points, especially about having poor quality products and services. People are talking about them anyway, so you had best learn to listen to social media. It’s your customers, after all.
The ROI on social media can be a powerful argument for using it to reach highly targeted markets more cost effectively. In the long run, of course, this puts pressure on mass-market brands that then have to compete more with niche brands and marketers that can use social media effectively. Perhaps that’s the way it should be.
Quentin
I started a new business marketing site on the 19th of May 2009 and by just posting and using Social marketing I am now getting over 100 visitors a day and have a page rank of 3.
This is just over 6 weeks so whether you think it works or not the proof is in the results.
We help small to medium sized businesses do the same and their results are the same.
Now we have very limited resources and started this as a test to see if it would work. The secret is really about adding content and not getting to hung up with the fad side of things.
Once you create the content get it out there through all the mediums available. It is your digital real estate.
Its not about doing a lot but doing a little each day. We teach our clients to post every second day and then promote every other day. There are so many great tools for businesses to automate much of this that time should be only say 1 hr a day to get great results.
Que
Darren Hughes
Hi Quentin,
Many thanks for your comment. It’s always encouraging to hear how a small business can leverage social media to create success. It’s also great to hear that you are passing on your knowledge, beliefs and your skills to help other business’ make the most of social media marketing.
Looking forward to hearing other success stories.
Regards, Darren
David Brennan
Interesting post, and I agree with most of it BUT I am disappointed that most of the discussion is about SMM as a separate silo, to be evaluated alongside ‘traditional media’ (whatever THAT means!). Two obvious things to point out – people don’t inherently want to have conversations with brands – conversations with friends are much more fun and satisfying. Secondly, conversations don’t happen in a vacuum – it is activity via push media which often forms both the basis and the context of our brand experiences. But when brands get the integration opportunity, social media can be effectively used to accelerate the buzz and – an often neglected part of the process – as a great research/feedback tool. One excellent example from the UK – Aleksandr the Meerkat – from comparethemarket.com’s TV campaign – has more UK Facebook fans than the leaders of the 3 main political parties combined…but then, that may be more a comment on the state of our political parties!
Anne Erasmus
Just what I needed – thank you! I am presenting a campaign proposal to a prospective client, and wanted to add social media to the mix. Although fairly new to it myself, I am learning daily, and definitely seeing more hits on my website. Although it hasn’t translated into business just yet, I’m working on some ideas to give that side a bit more impetus. Your article puts the pros and cons so simply, I now know exactly what I need to say to this client! Thank you!
NJorman Levin
I feel like an Old World prophet of doom, wearing sackcloth and declaring, “The End is Near”. Social Networking is most of all, “SOCIAL”. I can not see any substantive business increase from Tweeting. Does anyone buy a new soft drink or pair of sneakers because the company that makes it is sending out smm’s? One cute YouTube works dynamically and exponentially because it’s viral (try “spiral”, by the way, which has no negative connotations and which should replace “viral”: remember, you heard it here first – but that’s a whole other smm!). Imagine a tweet that says, “hey, I just got me a new pair of cool Widgetators!” Are you going to buy them if that message came from Widgetators Inc? Twitter is not the Holy Grail, it’s simply new. I wonder if this is not just a case of the emperor’s new clothes.
Patricia Davidson
Hi, I’m in the lifestyle e-retail arena and also run a web directory. I was asked by the BBC to go on Breakfast TV about Twitter, which I did and then started to get hooked.
Twitter has put me in touch with several senior execs in my area, it keeps me in constant contact with retailer I have written about and it is sending a great deal of traffic to my website.
Having spoken to major retailers where Twitter is in the top six of their customer referrals there’s no doubt in my mind that you can’t afford not to be there.
Concerning spam you have to be careful who communicate with and yes, it’s time consuming, but so are most things that are worthwhile.
SMM is without a doubt the new wave – learn how to ride it and it will work for you, bury your head in the sand and you’ll be left behind in the same way that retailers who are still ‘thinking about going online’ have already been.
Cindy Lindenbaum
This is the first article I’ve read that outlines the pros vs cons of SMM in a concise, simple, understandable and strategic way. Well done! I especially like your point about “blogs don’t write themselves” – there are many marketers who don’t follow thru (amazingly enough!) after launch of an initiative and expect that a one hit wonder will carry the campaign and fulfill objectives/goals. Then wonder why it didn’t perform. Anyone getting into SMM as another channel for the brand must consider it another level of relationship building with the consumer – continuity and consistency are key and I think will prove itself over time.
Thanks for the food for thought!
rhooda hurwitz
Darren,
You laid out the pro’s and con’s really clearly. Helped me understand the issues and cut thru the hype. thanks!
Rhonda
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