November 2009
Today's online gurus love to talk about how social media is the new existence:
"Our attention is more fragmented than ever before. Those who insert themselves into as many channels as possible look set to capture the most value.
Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Fitbit and the SenseCam give us a simple choice: participate or fade into a lonely obscurity."
And many outright deride anyone who might question the necessity of social media engagement. Essentially, they assert, if social media doesn’t mesh with your strategy, then your strategy is wrong.
"Social Media is not right for your business if...
...you don't like to listen to your customers.
...you don't like to listen to your employees, and getting employees to change their thinking is impossible."
Our Take
From our perspective, the single most important thing to know about social media is that it is not a communications strategy. It is a tactic that should always be employed to serve a larger strategy.
This strategy will dictate which specific tool(s) are most appropriate for your needs – Twitter may be an effective way to access the media, for example, and MySpace is preferred by Latino youth over Facebook. As is always the case in communications, the first questions are: "Who are you trying to reach? And what is the goal?"
The next question might be: "What can you invest?" Social media doesn't require a massive amount of cash for an ad buy to be successful, but it does require a significant investment of time and thought on your part – over a period of months, not days.
A blog that is updated once a month does not significantly increase your search engine visibility, invite return visits or launch devoted RSS feed subscriptions. And if you've spent five minutes on Twitter, you know that keeping up with that ever-rising current of information can be a roller-coaster. You may even get some feedback you didn't want to hear.
Such are the joys of social media – you cope with a loss of control, but gain unprecedented engagement.
"But what do I do with social media?"
The technical components of a social media approach will be different for every organization (and every individual!), but the fundamental answer is this:
Social media engagement is simply word-of-mouth marketing, online.
Like the fundamentals of word-of-mouth, the impact of a social media effort depends on the strength of your message, a trusted messenger, and, last but not least, the quality of the product or service.
We have known for some time that as more people spend more time online, their information pathways have become increasingly Web- and mobile-based (see innumerable articles on the death of old media at the hands of the blogs, etc.). But then social media came along and rerouted that information pathway – it no longer runs source-to-reader, it runs friend-to-friend.
Funny moments caught on video are now viral globally via YouTube. Potential hires are recommended publicly by their past colleagues on LinkedIn. You can influence what other people order for dinner at your favorite restaurant on Yelp. There is probably a social media possibility for every organization.
However, lest the allure of those possibilities lead you to empty gimmicks and inauthentic endeavors, remember that successful social media engagement needs to start with your strategic goals and reflect transparently who you are and what you have to offer.
Where to start?
Online Outreach Tools Guide to review ratings of tools like blogs, photosharing and podcasting based on their application to your communications objectives.