A couple of weeks ago I hired a contractor to build my new house. I was very excited because this will be my first house and I have the luxury of building from scratch. I interviewed numerous contractors, determined to find the right one for this job. After all, building my house is just about the most important thing to me right now. I want it to be perfect.
After weeks of interviews, I settled on the contractor that I trusted to build the house I want. About a week after I hired him, the contractor called me at work and asked me to meet him at the build site on my way home. So, at around 6:30, tired from a long day, I arrived at the plot of land on which my new home would soon stand.
There was stuff everywhere: Lumber, bags of concrete mix, tools of every kind, two large Caterpillar back-hoes, a cement truck, and a small battalion of workmen. The contractor met me at my car, a broad smile beaming and a firm handshake.
“Well, Mr. Peters,” he began, “We’ve got everything we need. All the lumber has just come in. We’ve got the cement and equipment for the foundation. I’ve got brand new tools all ready and my best team. I’ve even got an electrician and plumber with all their equipment set up as well. Yes, Mr. Peters, I seems to me that we’re pretty much finished here.”
Okay, so clearly this story is made up. I am not building a house, there was no contractor, and therefore the contractor never uttered that ridiculous statement.
Think about this: If you hire someone to build you a house, and they claim to be done after getting together all the tools to build that house, you would likely pitch an absolute fit. Why then is this sort of behavior tolerated in the field of new media marketing? As I say in the title of this post, social media marketing is a means to an end, not the end itself. In other words, social media is the tools, not the house.
Unfortunately, the sort of ridiculousness seen in my little story seems to be taking place in the marketing world when dealing with the new, nebulous, and daunting field of social media. I see it happening in two separate scenarios.
Scenario #1
Scenario #1 takes place in a medium to large company. One of the higher-ups in the company decides that they are too far behind the competition and they simply must get a social media strategy right away. They pass the directive down to either their internal marketing team or their marketing/advertising agency. The marketers who are tasked with developing a social media marketing strategy launch into furious brainstorming sessions. “What’s best for us?” they ask. “Do we get a YouTube channel? Do we launch a blog? Do we let people upload pictures of themselves using our product to a special website?”
In this example, our marketing team settles on a company blog as the foundation of their social media strategy. The deadline approaches and the marketing team nervously makes their presentation to the aforementioned Higher-Up.
“What do you have?” the Higher-Up asks sternly.
The marketing team turns on the large computer screen and proudly shows the brand new www.company.com/blog. “We have a blog,” they say.
The Higher-Up peruses the blog for a few moments, scrolling down and clicking on a few links. He then sighs and leans back in his chair. “Well at least now we’ve got that social media thing handled,” he says.
Scenario #2
Scenario two takes place in companies of all sizes, though I have observed it most in smaller start-ups who look to forms of online marketing as a way to financially fit within their tightly cinched belts. Someone within the company begins searching for social media marketing and they find one of the countless “social media consultants” sprinkled throughout the internet. They contact one of these “consultants,” and the “consultant” enumerates the services he offers. They often look something like this:
- Teach clients how to use social networks like Facebook and MySpace
- Teach clients how to optimize their blog (often showing how to write catchier titles and add more pictures for easy readability)
- Strategize with clients about how to add more interactivity to their website
The person at the company is now sufficiently convinced of the expertise of the “consultant” and brings him on to help navigate the murky waters of social media marketing.
Analysis
Both of these scenarios are ridiculous, but more unfortunate is that both of them actually happen. These scenarios also share a common problem. In both cases, when the client wants a marketing solution they are given tools. The client wants an end, but they are presented with the means as if those means are the end. When this happens, it more often than not leads to failure (or at least unfulfilled expectations.) This failure is then blamed on social media as a whole, and, over time, these repeated failures leave a deep-set stain on the field of social media marketing. This all then leads to established marketers viewing social media marketing as digital tomfoolery, and new media marketers as 21st century snake oil salesmen.
In the first example, a blog might indeed have been an excellent choice for the social media foundation of the company’s overall marketing strategy. But it is not the existence of the blog that is important, it is the marketing role that blog plays and the results it achieves that are important. If our hypothetical company from scenario #1 sells cardboard sunglasses, then the purpose of their blog should likely be, either directly or indirectly, to sell more cardboard sunglasses. The purpose of the blog is not simply to exist. The blog should be considered and treated as a means to and end (sales).
I have spoken with people from numerous companies who are frustrated with the failure of their company blog. “There is just no ROI,” they say. The first question I ask is, “Why do you use the blog?” They stare at me for a second and respond, “Because we knew we needed a blog.”
A blog, like any other marketing component needs to serve a purpose. Blogs happen to be flexible and their purpose can be anything from customer service to traffic generation to branding the company as a thought leader to an outright sales venue. (Note: there are certainly many more roles a blog could fill). Once the blog has a purpose, once it fills a marketing role, goals can be set for it. Those goals could be sales, or increased page rank of the company’s website, or even increased brand recognition. Once those goals are set, the blog can then be used as an effective marketing tool (means) helping to achieve your company’s goal (end).
In the second scenario we see the all-too-common problem of answering the wrong question. Our hypothetical company in that scenario wants to pursue a social media marketing strategy. The “consultant” that they hire teaches them what social networks are and how to use Facebook and MySpace. The consultant also shows them how to write snappy blog titles that tend to fare better on social news sites. What doesn’t happen, however, is the company and the “consultant” deciding what the goals are. As such, the company now knows how to use Facebook (i.e. make a profile, update it, try to find friends, etc…) but they have no idea why they are using Facebook. Or, perhaps more accurate: they know how to use Facebook, but they do not know how to use Facebook to fulfill their marketing needs. After all, the way a B2B company uses Facebook is likely very different from the way a new music-focused e-commerce site does.
I think of this problem with the following analogy. I want to learn to drive a car. I hire someone to teach me how to drive. They show up and show me how to put the key in the ignition and start the car. They then take my money and walk away. I have no more of an idea how to drive than I did before. In fact, I am now more likely to get in a wreck than I was before I knew how to start the car. In this example, I had a goal, an end: to learn to drive. I was presented with a means to that end: how to start the car. But, the means was treated like the whole enchilada. Now I’m screwed. I still cant’ drive, I have wasted money, and I was told that I should be able to drive now, so I am angry and blame the whole thing on the car.
Conclusion
I suppose I should now conclude what has turned into quite a long post. The conclusion is simple really…it’s in the title. Social media marketing is a means to an end, not an end. When approaching a social media strategy, make sure you treat it as you do your other marketing initiatives. Determine first what your needs are. Are sales all that matters? Or do you want to better engage current users of your product to increase repeat purchases in the long run? Your needs inform your marketing, and social media marketing is no different. Don’t let someone sell you the means when you really want the end. If you want a house, make sure you work with a social media marketing agency that wont just give you the lumber.
I enjoyed this article and agree with most of its points. As a recruiter serving the construction and real estate industries, I’ve been able to take advantage of social media to identify to real estate and construction talent.
Although it’s a good tool, I still have to recruit. Social media networking in itself is not a “silver” bullet.
John P. Kreiss
President & CEO
MorganSullivan, Inc.
jpkreiss@morgansullivan.com
http://www.morgansullivan.com
Just some feedback, you guys “ramble” way too much. PLEASE get to the point. Remember we are all inundated with online media, and its getting to the pont where we must filter out about 80% of what we read.
The challenge that we are finding is that in Scenario #1 the higher ups are NOT turning to someone stating “we need a social media strategy”. Those decision makers are unaware that there is an alternative to the traditional forms of brand development.
… there is still a huge learning curve to get to either scenario 1 or 2.
Wow, interesting comments so far. I can’t believe that there are higher-ups who still don’t see the value in social media. It seems simple, but I guess not for some people. I mean, I have a hard time explaining blogging and such to my parents, but you would think that people whose jobs are to be creative and think outside the box would be more easy to convince.
Hi just came across your blog and i thank you for your story it was informative. I am interested about doing link building for my site too. Have you used the scrapebox.com tool? If so is it good? If not then what is the best tool? Thank you.