Beware the self-proclaimed social marketing expert.
This post at Mashable (from WAY back in December 2009, ancient news in some circles) made me laugh when I first read it. There were nearly 16,000 social marketing or social media experts on Twitter in December 2009. That was up from about 4,500 in May 2009. Wow.
You’ll find that these social marketing experts have given themselves the title. And few of them seem to agree on anything related to social marketing.
Some social marketing experts argue about the using the term “social marketing strategy” at all.
“It’s not a strategy!” they shout. “Social is a complete mindshift for the organization!”
Then, the same social marketing experts debate where social marketing should live in the organization.
“In marketing!”
“In PR!”
“In customer service!”
“In sales!”
“It should live in every employee!”
Some social marketing experts won’t refer to social marketing as a function. Or a campaign. Or a program. Or a channel. It’s a mindset, a culture change, a long-term play, a paradigm shift… or something else entirely, maybe even a conjured up term you’ve never heard before.
Then they’ll debate whether an organization should have social marketing guidelines for employees, no matter how basic or detailed, or if an organization should give employees complete social marketing freedom.
Next, the social marketing experts will tell you that your brand MUST be on Facebook, Ning, Twitter, LinkedIn and/or MySpace. And some will guarantee you 10,000 followers or fans or friends within 30 days!
These same social marketing experts will laser focus on HOW to use social marketing tools and social media sites.
What you’re likely to not hear these “experts” talk about is aligning social marketing with your business objectives, integrating your social marketing with your overall marketing strategy, conducting listening sessions, tracking and measuring your social marketing efforts historically and moving forward, developing a community for your brand, engaging with customers, using customer feedback in your product and service development process and ensuring customer service is directly involved in social marketing.
Social marketing isn’t about quantity. An arbitrary follower/friend/fan count should never be your social marketing goal. Of course, having thousands or millions of followers/friends/fans is great, but quantity here doesn’t necessarily translate to real customers and real sales. Social marketing is about quality communication with your customers. It’s a faster and more transparent way to engage prospects and customers from a marketing, customer service and product/service development standpoint, and is often a portion of a larger integrated strategy.
Never forget that the goal of any marketing is a sale (of course, a profitable sale from a long-term customer with a measurable lifetime revenue and profit stream). It’s just that saying “your marketing goal is a sale” is a lot more simple and easier to remember.
What social marketing should help you do is turn a sale into a long-term customer relationship, and help that customer help you attract more customers, and so on.
In business, that’s a wonderful life.
However, no matter what the experts tell you, success is never a guarantee.
Hello,
Your article came to my attention via Google Alerts. I want to state that you are not talking about SocialMarketingExpert.org, rather the generic term social marketing expert.
It’s funny…I started using this phrase almost 4 years ago and there were only a handful of people who used it too. Today, it’s a phrase that seems to get easily bantered about.
The industry of “experts” who do social media marketing is akin to the Contracting/Home Remodeling business. Every guy who did home repairs of any kind and had a truck and ladder all of the sudden became a Contractor. Obvoulsy having the tools does not an expert make. Many of these “experts” you speak of are frustrated internet marketers who couldnt make a buck but knew just enought to speak the lingo and sound authoritative and decided to try their hand at Social Media Marketing.
So it’s no surprise that they make outlandish claims…and worse yet do not have ANY idea how to make them come to pass. I can get someone 10,000 Twitter followers, but as you alluded…why? Does it serve their business goals to have 10,000 followers or does it just look good?
I have one insurance agent that even though he only has a few hundred followers, 35% of his leads and consequent business has come from his social media marketing efforts. He wants larger followers, but is making money even with just the handful of followers now. Another business I just talked to a few weeks ago (a mobile dog grooming business) is experiencing the same success. Ironically, both have only been doing social media marketing with advice from a real Social Marketing Expert for about 4 months. Bigger and better results are being built into a strategy that will unfold over the next year. That’s the “aligning social marketing with your business objectives” you talk about…
One last word about so-called social media marketing experts is most only have a handful of sites in their portfolio to use: namely Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and maybe MySpace. Whereas I have over 2500 social media marketing type sites that we can work someone into dependent on their goals and objectives as well as their market and who they’d like to reach. Sometimes it’s better to put a clients message in a less crowded social media platform.
Thanks,
Wayne Clayton
Social Media Marketing Advisor
SocialMarketingExpert.org
Thanks for the comment, Wayne. Absolutely I was referring to the generic term “social marketing expert.”
You give some great examples of real businesses using social marketing to produce real results without focusing on quantity of followers but rather the quality of followers. Thanks for sharing.
And I like your analogy to “contractors” in home remodeling. Spot on.
Sounds like you’ve got a great handle on social marketing strategy for your clients. Good luck!
Yes! Absolutely! I have been saying the same thing for more than a year now. I have upwards of 30,000 followers on various Twitter pages and across social media probably over 50k. It makes absolutely no difference whatsoever how many you have if you fail to make the necessary connections, build relationships, and establish trust and authority in your niche or area of expertise.
Again, well said. I have said it over again…perhaps the echo will build some day, huh?
John Zajaros