I got a message today from a one-time publisher of mine that began:
Social media has fast become a cornerstone of marketing strategy within business.
The question to ask as FaceBook’s results show the cupboard is rather bare is “why?”
This leads to a train of thought you might like to follow.
Investors and marketers have one thing in common.
Both are often prey to delusions. They imagine that something will come along and eliminate the need fopt thinking and analysis.
Take the dot com bubble and its child, social media mania. In both cases investors have fallen in love – and been disappointed. In both cases, marketers have fallen in love and been disappointed.
160 years ago journalist Charles McKay analysed investment mania in his very readable “Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” – which I have referred to before.
If investors studied history and looked at the numbers they would save themselves an awful lot of heartache.
But they don’t, so they get screwed time and again. Even smart people have lost millions on investments in social media.
The same applies to marketers. On what basis, for example, was General Motors spending tens of millions on FaceBook before they stopped? How did they analyse their results? Mind you, I often wonder on what basis they analyse their advertising.
There is no substitute for hard work and careful analysis. It is well over a century since John E. Kennedy suggested that advertisers “do the sums”.
But most still don’t bother.
Going back to the FaceBook debacle, no doubt many marketers will conclude that social media are a busted flush. I am not sure this is so. I think, once again, they all fell in love with some fine-sounding phrase (remember CRM, anyone?)
I have never understood what makes a medium “social”. What is an unsocial medium? The post is a medium. Is a letter unsocial? Is the radio unsocial? Is the press unsocial?
I do not think so. I think the letters page in your daily paper or the phone-ins on a radio programme are highly social.
It is interesting, is it not, that the letters page is a good place to advertise? Does it not follow logically that FaceBook, Twitter and so on should be reasonable advertising media?
I know: we don’t go on them to read the ads. But do you turn your TV on to watch the commercials?
The trouble is, the claims made are unreasonable.
Proper testing and research are required.
As Disraeli remarked, “Nothing is as good as it seems – or as bad”.
Social media (Facebook and ilk) is popular because, for users, communicating via the internet provides a level of excitement, a buzz, and a dynamic that may not be readily obtainable elsewhere. The same goes for other bandwagons and bubbles: they’re just a form of escapism from the drudge of every day.
The drudge and routine of every day work is boring: you have to bore to get somewhere. The deeper you bore the slower it can be before you achieve success. (Drayton calls it hard work and careful analysis; I call it positive thinking.) But when people don’t see it like that (usually when their job isn’t personally fulfilling) instead they experience the negative aspects so need some sort of release and what better for many than a social distraction.
Where marketeers/advertisers go wrong is in thinking they should be able to cash in on the buzz of social distraction without realising that often the buzz is generated by a release from the pressure of always being encouraged to buy something. For many people, spending money is not particularly liberating: on the contrary as well as leading to debt, life gets cluttered up with all manner of products and services that after the novelty has worn off are next to useless.
Now that there isn’t enough money to go round, or at least not enough people frittering their spending, marketers are clutching at straws. As I see it, the bottom-line for marketers is simple. Accept there are too many products and services so similar that for the most part all that’s on offer is just duplication so stop and do something really different, inspiring, and constructive for a change.
Consumers are moving on, prioritising and getting rid of rubbish, but businesses haven’t realised that. The purpose of recession and down-turn is to have a clear-out: flat or falling demand is a way of telling the companies that are not on the receiving end their products and services are not needed. When advertisers don’t get a (proper) return on capital, it’s social media’s way of saying the advertisers aren’t wanted. Take the hint, please!
Jesus Christ Drayton!
What is the point of sending me some half ass link to click when it’s your god dam email address? You’re discussing social media where the most important objective is to get some dumb cluck to click on a link to your blog or site.
You do however have a point, so I decided to take a look at your blog which in itself is some cockamamie social media tool. I have by the way noticed that your blog has become increasingly commercial and a lot less entertaining probably because you employ some social media whiz kid who keeps telling you to sell your talks rather than yourself. So my point is, sell yourself and if people like YOU then they will buy almost anything. THAT is social media.
I must apologise.
Actually it’s one of my more pointy-headed colleagues that needs to apologise.
Once I’ve finished – severely – reprimanding my colleague I’ll go bak to thinghs I underatnd, like adjectives, headlines, bad jokes, etcetera.
Best,
Drayton.
Good grief, Drayton! It’s not like you to make so many smelling pisstakes!
Tired.
A copywriter is never tired.
The blog of a copywriter can’t have typographical errors in it.
Oh yes it can, Eleanor. And mine often does. This is something I bang out in the moments I have to spare. The rest of the time I have a business to run and colleagues to harass.
This copywriter has been writing for a living for 56 years, Eleanor. You may find it amazing, but occasionally he does get tired. Also bored, drunk, amused, mystified, shocked, depressed, panicky, euphoric, confused, happy, miserable, proud, ashamed, furious and all the other things that flesh is heir to. It is called being human.
Social Media is popular because all the people that have trouble with
putting the right message in front of the right market, obeying by the media they choose to use e.g Search, Video, PPC, Direct Mail
Finally feel like they have accomplished what they couldn’t before:
Seeing people actually interact with what they post
How many of them actually understand that Likes don’t pay the bills and the whole point of social media is to get the people they interact with to turn into customers, clients or patients – amazes me
Brings us back to the
“Have you got a website?”
Yeah we got one of those!
Lets take another look into social media
everyone is going barmy throwing up another
“Win this IPAD when you allow us complete access
to your feed” MU HA HA HA
So the competition runs, someone wins and then
you see that pages interactions drop to something
lower than the Business owner that says
“Yeah we got one of those (website)”
The same thing you did to first attract that pretty
girl that turns every mans head when you walk past
the local night club is the same thing your going to
have to keep on doing to keep her attention.
Content is and always will be king
Facebook is a visual pleasing medium
Where some people result to lame market
i.e posting meme’s that make people laugh and
keep scrolling down
on the other hand you have people that really get it
https://www.facebook.com/LaBioguia?ref=stream
that page above posts killer content, where your likely
to learn something from everything they post.
They have more interactions than they have likes, maybe
it would serve them well to add a call to action to like the page
You can guarantee that most people found there page because of
the content and not some free give away, therefore the fans will
have a memory of the interaction with there page – rather than
trying to be a free loader.
Hi Drayton
My 2 penceworth …
Social Media marketing fails for 2 major reasons …
1) With a search on the Google monster, you find the ad. With SM the ad finds you. Even if the adcopy & targeting are a work of genius, the consumer will ONLY EVER do one of two things: (a) Not click the ad (b) Click the ad
EITHER WAY they will either never click it or never click it AGAIN, so the creative is dead in the water within days. No moving feast.
2) The context is completely wrong. With, say, the Yellow Pages, no one reads that book for fun. People who open the YP have already decided to buy and are now just looking for a vendor = exceedingly high commercial intent. With SM they are there to ‘nosey’ not to buy. (They are not even nosey-ing around a shop) = exceedingly LOW commercial intent.
SM ads are regarded much like someone at a party pitching MLM, or trying to sell you something on the beach = GO AWAY!
Social is the latest straw for marketeers to grab hold of, in a vain attempt to thrust their views in front of people focused on other things. This despite all the evidence that this is rarely valued, and only touches a small subset of real people out there.
In the IT industry, one of the latest rallying calls is a thing termed “big data”, where one of the current popular suggested demands is for Twitter ‘Sentiment Analysis”. An even smaller subset of your audience is even present on that platform.
Genuine conversations with people who know what they are talking about, and products/services that fulfill user needs or aspirations, are the new scarcity. Advertisers who behave like the annoying kid always jumping between you and an interesting TV programme are the unwanted plague.
I agree with a lot of the above. But ‘social media’ is only popular because young people use it, and young people now populate marketing departments. A while ago, parents accepted, for the first time in history, that their children were more educated and knowledgeable than themselves in certain day-to-day areas: electronics, computers and such. So older people became redundant in that respect. Tony Blair, for example, does not know how to use a computer, but his children do. So directors and MDs who run companies and are in the older generation have through ignorance abdicated modern marketing to their youthful knowledgeable colleagues. And the vital old lessons of marketing and return on investment, mostly unlearned anyway, remain undiscovered..
Morning Drayton! Long time no see… A bar in Nice about ten years ago if I remember correctly? Whilst I agree with much of the above and the general scepticism re Social Media I believe one or two key points have been missed.
To me newspapers, TV and radio are primarily ‘broadcast media’. Whilst they are encouraging viewer/reader/listener interaction (mainly via producing alternative content and forums on the Internet) this tends to be rather limited. Usually more of a feedback vehicle for the media owner. Whereas Social Media sites are truly ‘social’ – they exist for the users to interact. Admittedly most of the interaction is trivial. (I doubt if many of us are interested in what our extended friend or follower base had for breakfast or whether they’ve just become ‘mayor of Starbucks’!). But if someone is talking about your product or brand – maybe expressing an opinion or asking for a recommendation – that is something you can now monitor and respond to. These days I won’t book a hotel without checking its rating on Tripadvisor. Many people with a large numbers of social media contacts will ask them for a recommendation. Social Media Software enables companies to listen in on this and participate dynamically in the ‘conversations’. One the best examples is LinkedIn and the opportunity for b2b organisations to get involved in relevant LinkedIn Groups. eg a business software company can learn a lot and influence a lot of relevant decision makers and influencers by pro-actively engaging in a LinkedIn Business Software group. These groups are at least one element now in the buying process. After all if you’re buying a new car wouldn’t you be more likely to pick the new Jag if a friend or colleague had recommended it?
With regard to ‘Big Data’ this is another ‘CRM’ like expression dreamt up by the management consultants and designed to strike fear into the admittedly aging and increasingly confused senior marketing officer. It’s true there’s a lot more data circulating around these days – especially from the web. Making sense of it all and being first to do so can present a real commercial opportunity. In the medium term for some businesess it could even mean survival versus oblivion. But as Drayton said it just means doubt some proper research and analysis to see what data is important to your business. An ostrich with its head in the sand at least risks a kick up the posterior!