Closer To The Ideal

David Griner has a list of problems for businesses to avoid when they start using social media (I assume he’s thinking of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. The only site he mentions, in the past tense, is MySpace). At first, these might sound like clever warnings:

1. Lust: Loving your customers is great, but take it slow.

2. Gluttony: Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

3. Greed: It’s hard to shake hands while you’re reaching for someone’s wallet.

4. Sloth: Always avoid the temptation to “set it and forget it.”

5. Wrath: There are a lot of people out there itching for a punch in the nose, but you’re not the one to give it to them.

6. Envy: Don’t be dissuaded by other people “doing it better than you.”

7. Pride: Stay humble, rock star.

Sadly, the post is devoid of any data suggesting that these bits of advice have the slightest validity. Rather, the advice is hopeful, but fact-free:

In the ribald days of 2006, a business would sign up on MySpace and then start “friending” everyone with a pulse. These days, lusting after fans like that will get you labeled as desperate — or even as a spammer. So keep it in your pants and truly get to know the first people who connect with your brand. In return, they might just love you for life.

I’ve written before of my efforts to help The Second Road with their marketing. We spent a lot of time trying to find a marketing firm that we could hire. We were disappointed by most of the folks we talked to. They were fuzzy. What we wanted was a scientific approach. If, for instance, we spent $100 buying an ad on Facebook, how many people would that bring to our site? What if instead we hired a well known blogger? Everything needs to be tried, using small amounts of money. We wanted research, well-tested solutions, or experiments where success and failure were clearly defined. Instead, we got a lot of mush about things that are difficult to measure, for instance, “We will influence the way opinion shapers think of your site”. Okay, but how to measure that? We could potentially measure how many times the site got mentioned on blogs, but how much of that could be traced back to a particular marketing effort? If there was an uptick in mentions on prominent blogs, was that because of the efforts we’d made over the previous 3 months, or was it because of the new marketing firm we just hired? How to measure?

Susan Payton’s advice was a bit of a shock to me. I was almost offended by her tone of “let’s ignore the facts and do this anyway.” Her argument for social media marketing was wholly faith-based:

I think we need to shift our thinking about marketing results in terms of having absolute control and ability to micromanage the results and just sit back and let it happen. You won’t see results overnight, but if you use social networking sites correctly and participate in the right conversations, you will see a positive change. You will see traffic to your site increase. You will see sales climb. Just relax and let it happen.

Let’s all take a deep breath and let out all those years of being control freaks, of needing to know exactly how everything will pan out. Marketing 2.0 is happening as we speak. There is no precedence set. We are making history with internet marketing and social media. Do you want to go along for the ride or sit this one out and regret it later?

I’m unwilling to have that kind of blind faith in a strategy that has never been tried before and, frankly, I have to question the reasonableness of anyone making such a suggestion. I need some data before walking down that road. Even a few success stories, however much over-hyped, would help to justify this strategy. But where are the great breakthroughs? What company can say “We made friends with our customers on Facebook and results were amazing! Sales doubled!”

I apologize for picking on David Griner. I’m sure he is a nice guy. But his post gives me a good starting point to repeat my concerns about hype regarding “social media marketing.” Griner is apparently in the marketing industry. His blog describes him thus; “David Griner is a social media strategist for Luckie & Company. He’s also a contributor to Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com.”

What I feel is missing from some of Griner’s advice, and from the advice I’ve been hearing from other enthusiasts of social media marketing, is a sense of ROI, some concept that maybe the dollars might be better spent elsewhere. Consider this concluding bit from Griner:

Successful social media really is easier than you’d think. If you plan ahead, pace yourself and listen more than you talk, you’ll strike a chord with existing customers and potential fans alike.

Right, but is it cost effective? I’ve no doubt that a company can forge close relationships with a few hundred people on Facebook or Twitter, if it makes enough of an effort to do so. But will those few hundred people actually be worth the effort? I’d like to see a lot more information on this, detailed studies, before I’d trust this approach.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 8:57 pm and is filed under advertising, business, marketing, social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.