The majority of businesses are jumping on the social media marketing bandwagon and have no plan implemented, nor have they done any research on whether or not social media will even work for their company.
Why are they spending all this time tweeting or attempting to draw traffic to their Facebook and Google+ pages if it’s just going to fall flat on their audience? Because they don’t want to be left out of the conversation.
I came across this article that sheds light on the myths surrounding social media marketing. Businesses aren’t strategizing before they start a social media program because they don’t think it’s necessary or worth their time. Of course they’re wrong.
For example, think of all the planning and time that was necessary for Old Spice to create their “Smell like a man, man” ads. They didn’t just happen to stumble across an amazing social media campaign. They created it for a purpose. (The question really should be whether or not the campaign was successful, but we’ll leave that for another time…)
I also appreciate that the author reaffirms my stance on interns coordinating social media efforts. Don’t get me wrong, interns are great – I should know, I used to be one. But, at a previous company I worked at, they hired a young, hip intern to steer their social media marketing (of which – surprise! – they had no plan for) simply because they assumed that since she was a student, of course she must know all about social media marketing. Problem was that she didn’t. She had no experience with social media other than tweeting and planning events on Facebook. Not surprisingly the campaign, if you can even call it that, was a bust and generated zero interest in the program it was intended for.
A myth not mentioned in the article, but I’m sure most are familiar with, is the more followers a company has, the better. This is 100% not true. In most cases, your 3,000 followers that you boast of to your competitors are not warm leads. Your messages fall flat and they simply don’t care. To put it in a different perspective, imagine you’re exhibiting at a trade show and you advertise a free iPod raffle to draw traffic to your booth. Sure, you get a lot of leads that you can inundate with emails and sales calls post show, but most of them won’t remember who the heck you are or will hit the junk button. You have to do some recon on your leads to qualify them as potential followers and ensure that your messages will relate to them and that they do have an avid interest in what you’re offering. Otherwise, you might as well be tweeting to a brick wall.
Suggest reads:
10 Best Social Media Campaigns
5 Winning Social Media Campaigns to Learn From