Why Organizations Fail at Social Marketing

Social Media Marketing has rocketed into the online development space over the past few years and quickly become an essential component of any multichannel campaign. Unfortunately, because the medium is so new many organizations are missing the mark when it comes to using social networks for marketing. This is mainly due to a huge misunderstanding with how Social Media works. If you want to use Social Media effectively, your organization needs an understanding of the differences between traditional marketing methods and how Social Media works. And to explain that, we have to talk about economics for just a moment (we promise, no boring bar graphs or complicated math).

Social Economics Vs. Professional Economics

Every situation in life plays by either social economics or professional economics and mixing the two is where we run into trouble. Here’s an example.

Say you are invited to a dinner party and the host cooks an amazing meal. After eating the delicious food you compliment the cook and say “this meal was so incredible I must compensate you for it. Is $100 enough?”. Now I’m sure you’d never do that because it would be unspeakably rude. Dinner parties among friends operate on social economics which are hinged together by many unspoken rules like not offering money to your friends for their gestures of hospitality.

Alternately, if you had hired your friend to cater the dinner party it would be perfectly reasonable to sit down after the meal and go over the bill line by line. This is assumed and understood that when it comes to business matters an entirely different set of rules applies.

This matters in the realm of social media because social networks all operate on the social economics system. Hopefully you can see the conflict starting to emerge here. Traditional marketing platforms are interruptive and work on a professional economic system. Social Media works on a social economic system and thus requires a new set of rules.

So you can see how many organizations who elbow their way into social communities blaring their message with loudspeakers are often ignored. The summation point here is that you can’t apply traditional marketing methods or professional economics to Social Media.

Most of us participate in at least one if not many social communities. However, when we turn out minds to marketing to these communities we forget all of the irritations we hold about organizations who show up and don’t respect our space. With this in mind we’ve put together a few basic to keep you from applying professional economics to something inherently social. Violate them at your own peril.

• Social Media is a communication medium not a broadcast medium.
  
  This means that you must be willing to engage in a two-way conversation with people instead of just scheduling fire and forget messages.
• Social Media is a community not a target audience.
  People are on social networks to communicate with their friends, explore shared interests, consume content, distribute their relevant messages and connect with new people. The key is to find people who would be genuinely interested in your message.
• Social Media requires frequent attention not marketing automation.
  How many times a day do you check your Facebook? The point here is that people have Social Media consumption routines and in order to connect you must be active on the network – usually daily. People expect a prompt reply.
• You cannot be successful on every social network.
  Do you want to cultivate many random contacts or a dedicated group of passionate friends? To engage a passionate group you must focus your efforts. In reality you should pick 2 primary networks (no more than 3) and label any other social activity as secondary by prioritizing it appropriately.
• Social Media require resources
  Building friends takes time and energy. Give Social Media the resources it needs to succeed. That means appropriate man power and time. Intermittent busts of Social Media activity looks sketchy.

In summary, Social Media is much like going to any other social event. The people who are engaging, care about others and take time to form meaningful relationships will grow a garden of friends to help them. The guests who are obnoxious will be shunned and never invited back. Don’t let the online layer of technology separating you from the user fool you. Social Media is a very real kind of social interaction and success hinges on having good manners not pitching your idea to as many people as possible.

• No Comments »
• Leave a comment »

Tags: community, economics, marketing automation, online development, social communities, social community, social economics, social marketing, social media, Social Media Marketing, social networking, social networks, two-way conversation

Share this post: Twitter Facebook Stumble Upon Del.icio.us Digg