Social Media impacts every aspect of our cultures, from business, politics, journalism, media, and advertising. Within just the business realm, it impacts research, marketing, support, product development and employees within the firewall. Despite the vast impacts of this shift “power has shifted from large organizations to individual participants” as humans connect with other humans, we often forget to see the larger picture.
Aaron Wall is someone I respect, he is certainly a domain expert in search marketing, in his recent post The Inconvienent Truth About Social Media Marketing, he gives a perspective –that’s limited from a search marketers perspective –is bearish on social media marketing. Several people asked me to blog my responses, so here it is:
[Social media marketing has it’s challenges, yet success should not be measured on ‘search marketing’ alone]
Social media has many problems on it’s own (and I’ll frequently point them out) but we should remember that while search monetization is a dominant form in our industry, it’s not the only way websites are monetizes, in fact the complete list is here of the many forms of web marketing.
We’re seeing many more cases where marketers don’t want to monetize directly with ads, but would rather be part of a community of dialog with customers, so they can listen to the marketplace and learn. Also, we’re seeing examples where companies want the message about a product to spread (but not from their own mouth) but from word of mouth marketing. Companies like Dell want to build next-generation products using tools like IdeaStorm –where the customers define the product specs –in order to build better.
In each of the above cases, social media is used in a way much more than just search marketing and advertising.
[The greatest opportunities lie where companies be part of communities where ads may not even be present]
So before we suggest that social media marketing is ineffective, we should first look at the bigger picture, and perhaps revisit the 95 theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto.
Think bigger my friends. (Update: Steve Rubel is)
Just a thought….if I go to a party, I am in the social mindset, if there is a vendor with a small table (I am recalling Green Peace at REM shows in the ’80’s) I might give it a look, but I am in the social mindset, deeply of that mindset. If you want me to engage, it needs to be more than search ad’s on the side of the screen. Marketers need to get creative (big insight huh) and figure it out, that’s the problem/opportunity of any new media. So thanks Facebook for a free infrastructure to track my friends – the drinks are free and I am here for my friends (period.) I might pay attention to your sponsors if it’s fits with my mindset. I am new to trying to figure out this space but have decades in retail business – there are hundreds of patterns we use to get folks to engage with us but here are few social patterns that work: Book Club readings, how to events(think home depot), cooking classes..If vendors create value added content that might get others to socially engage in a commerce relationship then look at what works in the off line world. In trying to get the gestalt of this space (I have been thinking about it for a month) – I think the only folks who will make money are the people who sell the social networking equiv of tee shirts, posters and accessories(the app companies) – because…this is all fashion and superficial fronting to look good among your current set of peeps. And I went to the venture lab thing, where were the women developers, they should own the application space, come on, this is fashion – unless I am an old guy who doesn’t get how we are being transformed by the new version of the 45RPM.
Some obvious/hasty/informal SN segmentation:
Facebook, MySpace – younger people or single folks whose life patterns include a desire to maintain high levels of communications with their peers, friends and relationship prospects.
LinkedIn – people who want to organize their work relationship to help with job/career related questions, help access companies via existing relationships, help find a job.
Ning/Get Satisfaction – tools to organize communities around activity/life stage/brand, behavior, demographic, taste affinities or around common communications contexts..
as we know, each of these contexts can be broken down into the standard set of design artifacts: cognitive map’s, activity maps, persona’s, behavioral segments, scenarios etc. – has forrester done this kind of analysis? has anyone done an ethnography on the various major styles of social networks (I know the list above is light and probably way off, but as mentioned, I am trying to get a sense for how the internet internet audiences have organized themselves around SN’s to jump start a formal project into mapping an existing b2c business into the space using traditional design methods (that includes secondary research) – does anyone know where the centers of study are on SN segmentation research?
Just a thought….if I go to a party, I am in the social mindset, if there is a vendor with a small table (I am recalling Green Peace at REM shows in the '80's) I might give it a look, but I am in the social mindset, deeply of that mindset. If you want me to engage, it needs to be more than search ad's on the side of the screen. Marketers need to get creative (big insight huh) and figure it out, that's the problem/opportunity of any new media. So thanks Facebook for a free infrastructure to track my friends – the drinks are free and I am here for my friends (period.) I might pay attention to your sponsors if it's fits with my mindset. I am new to trying to figure out this space but have decades in retail business – there are hundreds of patterns we use to get folks to engage with us but here are few social patterns that work: Book Club readings, how to events(think home depot), cooking classes..If vendors create value added content that might get others to socially engage in a commerce relationship then look at what works in the off line world. In trying to get the gestalt of this space (I have been thinking about it for a month) – I think the only folks who will make money are the people who sell the social networking equiv of tee shirts, posters and accessories(the app companies) – because…this is all fashion and superficial fronting to look good among your current set of peeps. And I went to the venture lab thing, where were the women developers, they should own the application space, come on, this is fashion – unless I am an old guy who doesn't get how we are being transformed by the new version of the 45RPM.