Social Media Isn’t Traditional Marketing
As we’ve mentioned, traditional marketing is about having a
monologue with your customers and prospects. Social media,
on the other hand, is about having a dialogue. When you have
a dialogue with a customer or prospect, the communication is
much more fulfilling (and much more profitable).
In the old days, marketing was handled out of a single location
(usually called headquarters) where a central authority analyzed
customer research, sales trends, and demographic information
to arrive at a unique selling proposition (USP).
Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates & Company invented the unique
selling proposition. The idea was that, by identifying a single,
unique point of differentiation for your brand, you could
separate your brand from the competition. Reeves used this
technique to create a campaign for Anacin that tripled its sales
and, during one seven-year run, generated more revenue for
Anacin than Gone with the Wind had generated in a quarter of a
century.
Social Media Isn’t Just for Young People
A recent study indicated that the fastest-growing segment
on Facebook is women older than age 55 and that the largest
demographic on Twitter is the 35–49 age group. So, no, social
media isn’t just for young people. It’s for anybody who is
interested in using new technologies to grow their sales and
revenue.
However, people older than age 35 do take longer to adopt a
new technology. Part of the reason is that most humans don’t
like change, but another reason is that the neural patterns in
their brains are already structured for traditional technologies.
New technologies require rewiring the brain.
So let’s keep going. What else is social media not?
Social Media Isn’t a YouTube Video
We can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard someone say,
“Sure, our company does social media. Just last month, we
uploaded our CEO’s annual speech onto YouTube.”
For starters, let’s get something straight: The only person who
watched the CEO’s annual speech on YouTube was the CEO
and, perhaps, his or her family members. Nobody else tuned in.
We’re serious. Sorry to break the news to you.
Second, just because someone uploaded a YouTube video
doesn’t mean it’s a social media campaign. Social media is
about communicating across a wide variety of channels for a
sustained period of time. It’s not about tossing up a Facebook
Fan Page or completing a LinkedIn Company Profile. It’s much
more than that.
A social media campaign is similar to a marriage. You can’t
expect to have a good marriage if your primary means of
communication is a single conversation for ten minutes every
morning. (Trust us, that doesn’t work—we know some people
who have tried.)
What does work is a prolonged, sustained, two-way
conversation across multiple channels that enables both parties
to feel as though they’ve contributed and they’ve been heard.
When you can accomplish that, your social media campaign is
in very good shape.
Social Media Isn’t Always Online
For many of our readers, social media implies some form of
digital social media or communications enabled through online
technology. However, we can’t forget that a great deal of social
media marketing happens offline—after people have turned off
their computers.
In a recent study from the Keller Fay Group and OMD, offline
communications are still the predominant mode of marketing
across a variety of age groups. This study indicated that wordof-
mouth is considered to be “highly credible” more often than
online conversations.
Despite these trends, we believe numerous experts exist
in the area of offline word-of-mouth and that a number of
strong books in this area have been written. Therefore, for the
purposes of this book, we focus on digital tools and techniques
reflecting the booming growth of online social media demand.
Social Media Isn’t Something That Can’t Be
Measured
Okay, we’re giving our editors heart palpitations because we
used a double negative in this heading. But that doesn’t mean
it isn’t true. Social media can be measured—and, depending on
whom you ask, you can measure it in a dozen or even a hundred
different ways. (Hey, look! We said whom instead of who.)
The great news about social media is that, when you take the
time to measure it, you might discover that it is a significant
source of profits. Significant profits can make you rich. And we
can all agree that money is the only important thing in life.
Okay, that was a joke. Money isn’t the only important thing in
life. But you get our point—if you measure social media, you
can track your ROI. If you track your ROI, you can increase
profits. And that’s certainly not a bad thing.
We could go on and on about what social media isn’t, but then
the title of the book would be What Social Media Isn’t, which
doesn’t strike us as very appealing. So let’s keep the ball moving
forward and dive into the topic at hand, which is how to make
money with social media.
How to Tell If Your Brand Is a Social Media Magnet
1. Does the general public wear your logo on their sweatshirts? ___ Yes ___ No
2. Does the general public put bumper stickers with your logo
on their cars? ___ Yes ___ No
3. Does the general public wear hats with your logo on them? ___ Yes ___ No
If you answered “no” to more than one of these questions, your brand does not have social media magnetism. Welcome to the club.
The good news about social media magnetism is that, if you
have it, you can grow your social media program organically.
People actually want to be affiliated with brands that have
social media magnetism. They want to have your logo on their
car. They want to wear a sweatshirt with your logo on it. And
they want to be a fan on your Facebook page.
To be a social media magnet, you usually have to spend millions
of dollars and put in hundreds of thousands of man-hours.
Nike, Apple, and Harley-Davidson didn’t just happen. They were
part of a concerted effort to build brands that had social media
magnetism. And building those brands took decades, not days.
The second challenge our friends at Red’s Porch had was that
they were under the impression that creating a promotion was
the first step in a social media campaign.
But it’s not the first step—it’s actually the second step. The first
step is to use traditional media or word-of-mouth advertising to
drive awareness and traffic to your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube,
LinkedIn, or MySpace pages.
