SUMMARY: Social media has moved from an engagement model to an advertising model, but too many marketers still believe that their customers want a relationship with their brand.
social media marketing
It’s important to shift from a mindset of “using” social media to a mindset of adapting and thriving in an ecosystem where a highly connected, social, empowered consumer is now the norm, and traditional econometrics and data are no longer adequate to measure and track the success of content and campaigns.
Social media is a shrinking piece of a much bigger digital pie that requires rethinking consumer’s sociality, and relationship to brands.
Though the number of consumers who can be reached through social media channels may be shrinking, the digitally-enabled “sociality” that characterizes today’s connected consumer is expanding.
There is no doubt that resources are hard to come by today as brands look to cut costs to make numbers. Probably the biggest surprise I hear from clients, when presenting the “under the hood” of social media implementation, is “I had no idea that many resources were needed to do it”.
In case you missed it, it turns out that organic reach within Facebook is at an all time low at the same time that ad blockers are growing so fast that some smart phone manufacturers are thinking of including ad blockers on new models. When will marketers stop believing the hype and finally figure out that consumers don’t want to be bothered with irrelevant ads?
It seems that every social media expert is evaluating social media marketing, especially on facebook. While social media marketing is currently “old news” to a lot of brands there are still a big percentage who are trying to determine just how much time and budget dollars should be allocated to this channel. However, remember that social media marketing is not easy and in all likelihood you’re not going to get it right the first or even second time. At its core social media marketing is new approach to marketing “customer centric” instead of organization centric. It doesn’t mean marketers need to give up control of their marketing it just means that one marketing message is not going to resonate with everyone out there and that you need to fight for every customer and listen to what they have to say.
What are the key lessons that are continually being reinforced via new stories on the Web ? Well first we are seeing the shine come off the social media hype train as marketers look at new digital platforms and geting back to basics like ensuring their products are promoted at retail. It seems that a lot of brands believed social media was THE answer to their problems but in reality it’s another piece of the puzzle for a great integrated marketing strategy. Here are 10 things that every marketer should know by now…
There has been quite a discussion going on over at LinkedIn on my post about social media marketing. While most marketers know that they have to have social media the issue seems to be how much to invest in social media in relation to the bottom line. It’s especially hard to justify a full-time position to be a social media community manager since the line back to ROI is jagged at best.
A lot of brands are looking for social media marketing nirvana only to be disappointed because they can’t connect the dots between their efforts and the all important ROI. However, there are some key lessons from brands who are using social media to deepen their relationship with superconsumers.