The good news is that consumers are spending more time on social media, the bad news is that they don’t want brand interfering with their social media time. The San Francisco Chronicle discussed a recent Gallup survey citing that social media does not impact consumer purchasing decisions as much as it used to.
The management changes at Twitter and the site’s continued challenge to increase its active users is a clear indication that something is terribly wrong with social media marketing. I keep seeing irrelevant Tweets in my feed and frankly, I just don’t use Twitter as much.
Over at LinkedIn the feeds has become a free for all as people post everything from open jobs to their political affiliations. LinkedIn Groups have also become a huge joke with posts that are a mouth for PR departments. In fact the discussions within LinkedIn groups have declined dramatically.
Why did all this happen?
1ne: The social media self-appointed experts hooked a lot of suckers with the belief that people actually wanted to engage with brands. In the process, they have sold a lot of books and inflated their personal brands.
2wo: Marketers didn’t think through the “why” when it comes to the social media brand relationship.
3hree: Consumers don’t have the time for social media marketers and want to use social media on THEIR terms.
4our: Brands used social media as a broadcast channel rather than listening to and joining conversations.
5ive: Brands insistence that social media be measured. Can you really measure every customer interaction?
6ix: The hype around social media marketing.
7even: The belief that social media would save bad marketing and products.
8ight: Failure to execute on ALL brand touchpoints.
9ine: Not listening to and responding to customers in Internet time.
10en: You listened to Facebook sales people.
