19 Feb Social Media Marketing and the Skeptics
I’m heading out of town early today and don’t have much time for a long post, but just wanted to share sort of a rambling.
Over the last couple of weeks in particular, I’ve seen a number of posts questioning the value of social media marketing. Some of these (like the first link) are helpful and quite thoughtful and rightly say, “Hey, this isn’t for everyone.”
Others, like this one, make some really flawed assumptions, like the idea that social media marketing is nothing more than getting top bookmarkers. Uh, no. (Although he is right that social media marketing won’t work if your product sucks, and could make your life harder.)
Still others bemoan (correctly) the “get rich quick” shlocks that act like your next podcast will be printing money.
This reminds me in some ways of the Internet gold rush around, say, 1996 or so. Then, as now, we’ve got a new way to communicate. And some people are going to abuse it and do dumb things. But other people are going to figure it out, do it right, be thoughtful on the metrics and ROI, and build from there. Some cynics will say “Nobody has definitive ROI yet,” while someone with foresight is out creating it.
So, you can be a slickster or a thought-leader. You can be a cynic, or you can have vision as to how these new tools might help your company.
Nobody, including me, has all the answers. But if you don’t think that two-way communication has the power to revolutionize business, you haven’t been paying attention.
That’s my quick rant for the day… Enjoy!
