Why Social Media Marketing is Hard for Corporations
October 5, 2007
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Geoff Livingston over at The Buzz Bin has an interesting post about how savoir-faire is needed in social media marketing, and how hard it is for companies to be genuine. He says, correctly, that relationship building is about trust and perhaps this is why the Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) of the world are having a hard time grasping social media.
That’s all true, and easy to say, until you’ve been in charge of marketing in an organization. Suddenly, how “it could be so hard” becomes obvious. The system around the CMO has not historically valued long, patient, frank, two-way dialogue. Far from it.
Advertising maintains its appeal to the CMO because he/she can control and measure it, you can buy as much “noise” as you want. PR has similarities, too. But with social media, the people you’re “targeting” have to want to talk about you. When you work for a social media agency, you learn pretty quickly that “targets” don’t have to want to talk about your client’s product. Or they may not want to today. But the CMO is being asked to move product–today.
Over the last 40 years we’ve all gotten away from the true “marketplace” mentality (like the picture here…) in which an exchange is negotiated via two-way communication). Professional marketers were trained to talk. They were the “spinners”, the ones who could come up with the talking points, the unique selling proposition. Whether a customer was ready to listen wasn’t a big concern. We just had to figure out what shows they were watching and hope they stayed on the couch.
Now, fairly suddenly, the “marketplace” concept is coming back through social media, and people are talking about the principles of community building. Accurate, all of it, but also a sea change. I have a Masters Degree in Public Communications that I got only about 11 years ago. We never once talked about community building. We basically talked message packaging…
Social media marketing is coming, more slowly than maybe it should. And big marketers are used to having control and doing big campaigns. That means they are going to make big mistakes. Should we call them on those mistakes? Abso-lutely. That’s what we do on this site (Example 1. Example 2.). But we also respect the ones that have their toes in the water, because some of them are getting it right (Example 1. Example 2.). And when they get it right, it makes communicating with these companies that much better. Hang in there.
Technorati Tags: social media marketing , social media agency , community building , social media campaigns
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6 Responses to “Why Social Media Marketing is Hard for Corporations”
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Sixty years of mass communication rules will take a long time to unwrite. But first companies have to want to move in that direction. As you already know, most companies are resistant so that creates the many blogodrama issues we are seeing.
But as social media becomes more pervasive there will be little choice. Then the rules will be applied and learned or avoided, resulting in brand damage.
As marketers that already get it, our job is to evangelize and keep the lights on. Without a path, it is much harder to find your way.
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[have to want to talk about you] These few words from article above are very relevant ! Content is King ! It may go beyond what we call Spin ! It is interesting how quick Google built brand identity, by providing an everyman’s appeal ! Most corporations are not identified by being Socially Correct ,they are not going to express thoughts and ideas freely unless it produces profit ! Just my thoughts excellent topic!
@Geoff, @Marshal, thanks for the comments. it’s surprising just how difficult it is to just talk… it scares the crap out of people… we’ve been conditioned to do otherwise for a long time. ~Jim