Internet marketing « Word of Mouth Marketing | Social Media, Search, Blog, and Viral Marketing

Posts tagged ‘Internet marketing’

Social Media Exhaustion

There are many pundits talking about social media as a “bubble”. Just as we experienced the recent housing bubble or Internet bubble of a decade ago, they argue that social media will reach a point of diminishing returns. While I don’t believe that social media will ever disappear, there is some truth to this argument that we need to take into account.

I remember a mere 5 years ago I was doing seminars on what a blog is, what a podcast is, and how you use these in a business environment. Those seminars consisted of helping people set up their tools and learn how to use them in a meaningful way. Today, everywhere you turn there is a newspaper article, TV news segment, blog, or social network posting with someone’s opinion about social media, how to use it, and where it is going.

I was driving and listening to a sports talk radio show recently and heard “Tweet of the Day” segments and even interviews of athletes on what they Tweet about. Late night comedy hosts have bits about Facebook and Twitter almost every night. Also, since when did it become hip to plaster a “Follow us on Twitter” or “Friend us on Facebook” logo on every possible piece of company literature? When I saw the phrase, “WWJT? What would Jesus Tweet,” I knew it has hit mainstream America.

So what’s next?

I think many people are beginning to experience what I have for about the last year – what I like to call social media exhaustion. It is not that social media are not valuable. They are simply on overload. You reach a point where you feel as if you are the digital version of Henry David Thoreau. You just want to go find a pond somewhere and build yourself a cabin – sans broadband.

Remember when social media used to be the tool we used to escape all the noise of the advertising world? Now social media has BECOME the noise. We have created the very environment we were trying to avoid.

Is social media a bubble ready to burst? Possibly. The more likely scenario is that more of the classically trained marketers, like myself, are going to find ways to use this one-on-one medium to avoid the noise and establish relationships the old fashioned way… by earning them.

If you are tired of the noise, let us know. Bring us your tired, your worn, your huddled masses, and your fed up anti – Mafia Wars/Farmville/”Business Opportunities”/Group Invitations/Cheap Software activists. Come find rest for the social soul and value for your time. Tell me how you avoid social media exhaustion…

August 17, 2010 at 9:30 pm bcritchfield 2 comments

The Myth of the Social Media Marketer

I have mentioned this in presentations and on Twitter, but I felt it needed a blog post as well. I have been involved in social media for about the last 5 years. I have seen it grow from its infancy to a powerful communications and engagement medium. I have seen companies come and go and I have seen mega-brands created almost overnight. In my 16 years as a marketer, this is, by far, the most exciting and compelling trend to happen in marketing.

However, social media has spawned a not so pleasant side effect: so-called “social media marketers”. What I am referring to are the hordes of techies who figure out how to blog, podcast, or use social networks to build a certain following and then start billing themselves out as “experts”. How many “internet marketing experts” or “social media experts” have you seen boasting about their capabilities in their Twitter profiles or on their blogs? In a very short period of time (5 years) an entire service industry has been spawned by former engineers, unemployed college students, ex-sales people, high-school drop-outs, and housewives who are now marketing “experts”. Yeah, doesn’t make sense to me either.

One so-called expert posted a press release about how so incredibly awesome he was at social media. He has been getting coverage all over the social media networks, except it is as “The Biggest Douche in Social Media.”

If you remember nothing else from this post, remember this one key fact: there is a difference between users of social media and social media marketers. To give you an example, I know how to use Photoshop. Been using it for about 10 years to do little tasks here and there. I even delve into bigger projects occasionally and took a class on it at a local training facility. However, just because I know how to use Photoshop or Illustrator or Quark doesn’t make me a graphic designer. A designer has training and experience in colors, shapes, and the emotions of good design. The software he uses are just the tools.

The same holds true of marketers. Social media can be extremely powerful, but the rules of marketing still hold true. While social media may be replacing advertising as the communication vehicle, you still need to position, differentiate, and build an integrated communication plan. I have found that those who most ridicule the educated and experienced marketers as being “out of touch” with how marketing works today are those without an education and without experience. True, there are many marketers who are not keeping up with the changing nature of communications, by my prediction is that those who succeed long term in social media will be the classic marketers who learn how to adapt to the new realities of how consumers like to be communicated to. The Internet bubble burst because the realities of business had not, in fact, changed, only the delivery vehicle had. The same holds true for social media; the core principles of marketing have not changed, only the engagement vehicle has.

Are there social media marketers? Of course there are, and many of them are extremely effective. However, don’t believe every “expert” who tells you they can get you to the Top of Twitter or can build you a giant following on Facebook and have that equate to increased sales. The principles haven’t changed, only the tools have.