Do marketers smell the social media coffee yet?
This article was originally published at Digital Biographer, also written by David Petherick, in January 2008. That’s Eight. A year ago. I think it still is very relevant a year later…
The significance of social networks is now starting to become obvious to the marketing departments of larger companies, largely due to two factors – 1) Traditional advertising channels are proving less and less effective and 2) Marketing and advertising agencies have started to realise where people are spending their time.
They have seen the writing on the wall – with one particular statistic likely to be a challenge for many a marketing manager: “Social networks will become the dominant channel for viral marketing campaigns – email has been the dominant channel for viral marketing campaigns since the mid 90s, but social networks will overtake it in 2008.”
Another fact that’s staring marketers in the face – a tipping point that only has one further hurdle to clear: “In October 2007, Social Networks accounted for 7.7% of upstream Internet traffic to all other websites, making the category the second most important source of traffic after Search Engines.”
The next hurdle of course is for social networks to become a more important source of traffic than search engines. That’s a whole blog of its own, however.
An article in this morning’s Financial Times is entitled “Business urged to woo social network figures“, and uses language very firmly couched in the tradition of ‘moving product’ and the pages of publications such as ‘Campaign‘. This all suggests to me that although businesses may have woken up, they have not actually smelt the coffee – they still have the urge to sell cereals.
The bold italics are mine – citations are from the FT:
Companies hoping to use social networking to sell products should set aside part of their marketing budget to “court” influential members of forums and groups, a leading research company has urged.
“By carefully courting super-advocates, marketers will be able to use them to disseminate information successfully in a fraction of the time it would take via their own social media presence.”
It’s all very much focused on top-down, marketing messages being pushed out to consumers, and focuses largely on the ‘viral’ power that influential ’super-advocates’ within networks can wield – and these advocates are very much viewed as commodities, means to an end in reaching end users.
The bold italics are mine – citations are from the original report:
“Super-advocates reflect the needs of members within these social communities. Just as in the offline world where newspapers or media channels gain a loyal and trusting audience who value their opinion and perspective, the same is true within social media. These individuals personify citizen journalism – outspoken, articulate and with a die-hard following. When they speak, members listen.
“Marketers in 2008 will need to build into their strategies a scalable framework for working with super-advocates. The key to this will be providing them with exclusive benefits and respecting their role within their communities.”
“Keeping an active eye on these forums can forewarn a brand
about any storms brewing or lucrative opportunities.”“By carefully courting super-advocates, marketers will be able to use them to successfully disseminate information in a fraction of the time it would take via their own social media presence… Super-advocates will be high maintenance because they know that they hold all of the cards and, if badly handled, brands will have an influential detractor on their hands…”
“Marketers must be prepared to do everything in their power to keep these key influencers onside and set aside marketing budgets to court them.”
So, good news! All you star bloggers, club leaders and members with large networks can expect to have brown envelopes, product samples or ‘exclusive benefits’ pushed in your direction over free lunches by smiling PR-types! But please don’t worry – you will still have “your role within the community respected”.
Yes, it is clear that the marketing guys still don’t quite get it when it comes to social networks, but the language is starting to change, and there is even the simple admission that most marketers simply do not have a clue: “For the vast majority of marketers, social media marketing is uncharted territory. The traditional marketing rules simply do not apply in this environment.”
Indeed, but the suggested strategies and the language used are all firmly embedded in traditional advertising and marketing territory. Of course, that’s probably still necessary in order to reach the ears of those responsible for such marketing and advertising budgets (and those are the main target readership of this report). The report has fairly naked ambition, encouraging marketers to measure social network activity through the metrics, services and data the two companies collaborating on the report happen to be able to provide.
It is clear that even if they have not yet smelt the coffee, they smell the money, because the authors of the report do recognise a simple economic reality: “The potential returns from reputation management and research and insight will soon be greater within the social media than any other channel.”
Amen to that. But reputation needs to be earned before it can be managed. Insight does not come when you are talking to people, but when you are listening to them. Marketers still need to do more research – and the only kind of research that works in the evolving world of social networks is live research – marketers need to be inside these social networks, learning, listening, and working out not how things work, but how people work. Sure, they might see the benefit in cozying up to ’super advocates’, or paying ‘people’ to do that stuff for them, but they actually need to shut up for once, and listen to the conversation, otherwise they may find there will be fewer and fewer advocates out there.
Read Full Story by Ben Fenton at FT.com >>
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