Is the Bubble on Social Media About to Pop? I Freakin Hope So
I find social media marketing to be a fascinating topic. It is currently the hot topic in most marketing and online circles. Many “social media experts” believe every business needs to be on Facebook, have a blog, and Twitter to be successful. The title “social media expert” itself is often an oxymoron as many of these experts are actual morons. Social media is a very powerful tool, if harnessed correctly. Unfortunately, many of the experts advising companies don’t truly understand how social media works. They also create social media campaigns with little or no regard to branding or organizational marketing goals. Adding a Facebook page is not a social media strategy. Nobody wants to be friends with Joe’s Plumbing. You have to think about the company, its marketing goals, and the online communities you want to utilize. For most companies there are good ways social media can be leveraged but unfortunately some business just don’t fit and trying to shoe-horn them into a community where they don’t belong is a terrible idea. A poorly designed social media campaign, even if popular, can have a very negative effect on the advertiser.
Take for example the recent campaign for Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut created a fun viral video intended to make circles in the social media arena. The video did indeed make circles although they were primarily around marketing and advertising forums where the campaign was criticized heavily. Many true experts felt that the videos, which were basically a couple of guys going into small local pizza places and ordering Pizza Hut pizza while the owners got upset they were choosing Pizza Hut over their local restaurant pizza. Unfortunately one of the clear messages here is that Pizza Hut, the corporation, wants to Walmart all of your local Pizza restaurants. I am sure is not the message they intended to send but it was the message many took away from the video.
In an article on CNET I found a great quote, “Research firm Gartner estimated last fall that a full half of companies’ “social media campaigns” will be unsuccessful, pouring some cold water on the hype surrounding buzzwords like “app-vertising” and “engagement ads.” The problem, analyst Adam Sarner said at the time, is that too many companies fail to keep the interests of the community in mind.” If you want to jump into social media spend time understanding the communities you’re trying to enter. If you want to do a viral video spend some time watching YouTube videos and understand what is popular. It has been said that if you don’t adopt social media you will not survive. I don’t believe this is true. I think social media marketing is a powerful tool that will be leveraged by some popular industries. I also think that many of the advertisers trying to enter the market have no business there and are better off staying on the sidelines. With tighter budgets and lack of successful results many of the companies doing and providing social media marketing with no real objective will hopefully disappear soon and we can get back to boring companies content with buying advertising on social media sites, while the social media experts look for jobs at Taco Bell.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment