Just stop, please! Every week I see a post on LibkedIn about how Instagram or other social media channel is going to add sales dollars to brands and products. Well, here is a some cold water “people don’t want brands on social media unless they want to complain and believe me there are a lot of very grumpy, pissed off consumers out there.
Milo Yiannopoulos had this to say about brand on social media ” “viral marketing” is a hoax. And there’s no evidence social media drives sales, or produces any interaction with customers except The Bad Kind. In short, there is no upside. But there are colossal disasters waiting to happen. Your customers are grumpy monsters, and they’re waiting for you to screw up. They love it when you do. Your competitors are waiting for you to screw up, too, so they can tell the journalists, who are also waiting for you to screw up, all about it. Some people will even pay to drag your name through the mud.”
I just looked thru two years worth of qualitative research with consumers and one point always comes as a topline finding, “they don’t want brands in their use of social media”. Of course social media agencies and the so called ‘experts” would have you believe otherwise because they have a vested interest in seeing you waste money in social media.
Michael Spencer takes it a step further. He says “Facebook, the measure and mother of all social media, is showing quite serious symptoms of this exodus. Personal sharing is down likely to result in a spiral of decline as Facebook is now used more as a News and Video feed. Facebook posts consisting of users’ own words and images–fell 21 percent from 2014 to 2015, contributing to a 5.5 percent decrease in total sharing and this is only set to increase far more rapidly in 2016”.
Brands that believe in social media marketing believe in the fairy princess and are losing focus on what’s really important to consumers. There is no magic channel to increase sales despite eMarketer’s nonsense about more money being switched to digital. Television broadcasters worried about the migration of ad dollars to digital video may be cheered by research last week that suggests reducing spending on television spots has a negative impact on sales.
A study by TiVo Research, in partnership with customer engagement consulting firm 84.51 and media companies including A&E Networks, found that sales declined at 15 consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies that cut their TV advertising. The companies, who are not identified, cut their TV budgets between 20% and 70%, generating a combined sales loss of $94 million., the study found.
WOW!
Social media marketing was a legend in its own mind.
