Another post on social media

Social media is talked about everywhere but how relevant is it. A lot of people are continually talking about social media in the same instances, saying the same things with a different twist. However we are still lacking in a plethora of well performing social media campaigns, ok Burger King’s swap your friend for a whopper was cool. I believe it is true that not many marketers really no how to use social media, but who can blame them the fast development and everchanging realm of the social sphere is a hard nut to crack.

They way people use social media has changed rapidly, not to mention, the uptake. Also the changing demongraphic of different social platforms is another concern. Surely we have come beyond the knee jerk reaction of yes I should be using facebook and twitter for my brand and started with the age old approach of first asking why? What are the benefits? What is the strategy?More importantly, where are my customers?

I think the fundamental fall down is not that us marketers don’t get social media, we just don’t apply the usual approaches of first establishing a clients problem or need and drawing from the process of research and analysis the best strategic approach. This is when we need to take into consideration the different elements/goals/objectives and measures of social media not before.

Social media does not fall outside the basic principles of marketing. Talking to your audience in the right place at the right time applies across all communication and interaction, social media simply brings to like the word ‘talking’, thats right this is a conversation and possibly for the first time you are going to get a response and ‘dialogue’ going you have so strived for all this time. Welcome to getting closer to your goals of targeted communication and actual ‘direct’ one-to-one interaction. Embrace it, but only when your ready and know what to do with it.

People can say all they want about the benefits and complications of social media, what brands and agencies need to establish is how they can align their objectives with a social media strategy and continue to be innovative in their approach and differentiate in what will no  doubt become a crowded market place. So lets stop talking about it and start doing more of it.

ELx