which social media tribe do you belong to?
I do enjoy the dust up of opinions caused by the discussion of Social Media and Social Networking and how to use it from a marketing perspective and from a user’s perspective.
There’s….
“The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread” Tribe
“The Social Media/Networking is a Total Time Suck” Tribe
“The Occasionally Dip My Toe in The Water” Tribe
…and the always popular
“Prove It To Me” Tribe
There is always a few with such strong opinions (usually negative) that I get a kick out of it. Make no mistake, I myself do not shy away from strong opinions while also knowing that when I issue absolutes, I risk a little egg on my face.
As usually, I’m always the odd man out as I belong to the…
“Social Media/Networking is a Part of My Overall Marketing Mix” Tribe
Ours is a small tribe made up of folks who actually write and live by a marketing plan that has objectives, goals, targeted audiences and measures against it.
Some in our tribe do not use Social Media at all…but they can still be in our Tribe and not the “Time Suck” tribe because they have reviewed – not unilaterally dismissed – Social Media tools and decided it doesn’t work for their marketing objectives.
Smart marketers, whatever their business, adapt and study a changing landscape. Today’s change includes understanding and usually adapting to having Social Media and Social Networking as a part of the marketing mix.
The Social Media marketing mix is like an old family recipe – you make up the ingredients and portions based on some basic assumptions. A cake will need things like flour, eggs, water etc., but you may decide to add a little bit more of this or that or bake for a shorter or longer time than is standard.
With Social Media and Social Networking – it’s like an internet cake. Basic ingredients include having a free account on the most popular Social Media outlets: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, FriendFeed. Again, it’s free – the worst that could happen is that you get some SEO love from your account if all you ever do is set up a basic informational profile.
Then, if you want to dig deeper, you can figure out how these services and others (like blogs, podcasts, video sharing) might or can benefit your marketing objectives. Because your time is valuable, part of how you assess the marketing value of these tools is to decide how much time you can and are willing to commit to their execution. Time is as much a marketing expense to a business as the actual layout of cash.
If the answer is yes – we/me should do this and I can do this – great, carry on. If the answer is no, it doesn’t fit with our objectives and budget (primarily time but also possibly money) – great, carry on. In both cases, you really studied what you need to know about the tools and compared them to your marketing objectives and made a smart business decision.
You were not simply dismissive!
It seems simple but that process is a fail for many small business people because their busy-ness (not their business) helps them to avoid learning new things and ultimately they seem resistant to change…they enjoy the comfort zone of the familiar.
To them I wish nothing but a comfortable and obviously unplanned snooze.
