While everyone is out spreading the gospel of social media I have found myself spreading a slightly different message lately. Now, don’t get me wrong, social media is an awesome tool for running a marketing campaign, I am on board completely with this, but it is just that, a tool. Social Media is not the answer, it’s the delivery mechanism. I feel that while everyone is serving up the social media cool-aid, we (as an industry) might not be doing our clients any favors by not preaching the basic fundamentals of web2.0, specifically blogging.
While it is true that there is no greater way to build an audience than Social Media right now, I still feel that once you have accumulated this audience you have to “entertain” them, for lack of a better word. By “entertain” I am not referring to song and dance, or anything like that. Your social media audience, whether it be on Facebook or Twitter, has chosen to align themselves with your brand for a particular reason, whatever this reason is, they obviously expect to hear more about it or interact with others about it.
Granted, Twitter offers an excellent opportunity to push content to your audience but when used by itself it only allows you 140 characters to get your message across. Now, I realize that a lot can be said in 140 characters, for instance, coupon and promotional codes can easily be tweeted, but there are always going to be instances where you need more than 140 characters. Without going into a lot of examples, let’s just say you have a new product that you are planning on releasing. You want to push this product information out to your subscribers but it’s impossible to describe with 140 characters, this is not uncommon. It’s widely accepted today to post a shortened URL linked to a blog post with details about this product such as it’s specifications, proposed release date, pricing information, etc. It is for this reason that I find myself emphasizing to clients over and over that blogging is foundational to most campaigns and not so much the social aspect. Yes, we are going to use social media to push your content out there but it’s the content itself we are pushing…
Getting Past the Idea that Blogging is Different…
While the concept of blogging is not hard, a lot of companies wrestle with it when they finally get around to implementing it. I know because I see it everyday. In fact, I have been talking with a close friend recently who has had a corporate blog for several years now and has wrestled with pushing it because he comes from the old school where it’s either published content (web pages) or white papers (pdf’s) that are both carefully worded and lengthy. After talking on the phone for 2 hours one night we determined that the whole informal perspective of a blog post is what he is wrestles with the most. I carefully worded my response to him to let him know that the whole informal thing that he is wrestling with is just the new language of the web.
Now, do I think that white papers or static content on the web is going to go away or become less important? No. I think that there will always be a place on the web for formally worded, static content.
But… just like how Nirvana came along in the 90’s and made it hard for Poison to sell records, blogs and user generated content have forever changed the way we research products and brands… (I am pretty proud of this analogy for some reason!)
Here is a real-world example, I am currently in the market for a digital video camera. I had a few brands in mind so I have naturally been on their websites to see what the technical specs were, but when it comes down to brass tacks I go out and read blog posts that others have written about these products. It is here that I get the big picture. I also don’t think that Apple shows you how to jailbreak the iPhone on their website either, but there are people who have bought the iPhone just to jailbreak it and make it do certain things that they have seen others talk about on their blogs.
With this being said, I hope you can see the point that I am trying to make. The blog is foundational and should be thought about as the center spoke on the wheel of your campaigns. Now, keep in mind that I am well aware of the scenarios where blogging is not foundational, some of these I mentioned earlier, but a lot of our clients will never find themselves in these scenarios based on their business models. It’s our job as consultants to ready our clients with the tools they need for success. It is for this reason that I am going to be pushing a few posts out over the next few weeks that deal directly with the business of blogging.
The By-Product of Social Media Becoming a Buzzword…
On a sidenote, by social media becoming such a strong buzzword, a lot of clients are inquiring about it. I think it’s good to be a realist and debunk a lot of myths regarding social media when talking to clients who sit there with hopeful eyes as you discuss Facebook & Twitter. This is one thing that my partners and I try to do when we meet with our clients and the topic of social media comes up. We emphasize that, yes, in some cases amazing things can happen, sometimes almost overnight (we have seen this first hand), but it’s important to stay grounded and not put all of your eggs into one basket. Something else that I try to emphasize that while we might not be re-assuring you that you are going to do great things w/ your social media presence, it’s extremely important to have this presence regardless, the conversation is going on anyway (probably more on this topic here…)
Questions or Comments?