If it hasn’t happened to you yet, you will inevitably hear the words “We need to be on Facebook and Twitter.” Now mind you this isn’t coming from some profound strategy or remarkable use for the technology — but simply because that is what all the lemmings are doing. You”ll find these words freshly dripping from the mouth of many senior and mid-level leadership returning from business conference who ironically have:
a) never been on Facebook.
b) if they have, still don’t have a profile picture.
or my personal favorite
c) sign their name/initials to all of their posts.
As much as I enjoy social media and the many humorous laughs it affords, I don’t think marketer’s (and especially trade journals that cater to marketers) really understand that Social Media has its limits. From reading Ad Age you would think that the Apocalypse will now happen in 140 characters or less.
Many marketers suffer from the delusion that customer’s want to have a personal connection or relationship with a brand. I hate to burst your bubble, but they actually just really like your product. Don’t get me wrong, but as much as I like Coca-Cola, I could care less if they are trying to get their 2 millioneth fan on Facebook . . . I just want a refreshing drink when I’m thirsty. Of particular interest to me are the businesses like steel manufacturers getting fan pages. Really?
I certainly hope every business joins Facebook soon so that I can become a fan . . . because afterall, fans = sales, right? Well . . . not necessarily . . . someone put it like this: If a restaurant has 1,000 people sitting in its establishment because they like it, but no one buys a meals . . . you aren’t going to make any money – shocking, I know.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate social media at all. It’s a tool . . . but just that a tool. If you are going to use Social Media have a plan, stick to your plan but don’t make it your business plan.
Rememeber, that your business made money long before facebook and it will continue to make money long after facebook. I hope that businesses will realize the folly of hiring twitter experts or facebook gurus with proven experience in social media (how does one even define proven experience . . . ?) If you’ve hired one of these so-called experts, I hope you see a return on your investment, a real one – not simply 20 comments in response to your post of “Will the groundhog see his shadow?”
Just as we learned the hard way in the late 1990’s with the dot-com burst. I won’t be a bit surprised to hear of the Social Media Meltdown of 2011. You’ve heard it from me, consider yourself warned . . . the writing is on the wall – literally?
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