Two Reasons Your Brand Isn’t Getting the Best from Social Media
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Social Media [noun]: websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking — Google
Many organizations want to leverage on Social Media to boost one or more of their business objectives. And more often than not they fail in their attempts to do so, leading to conclusions that social media isn’t for certain businesses or that the ROI on social media isn’t justifiable.
More than once, I’ve been approached by people (on behalf of organizations) who want to generate a buzz for their event or product. “We want to noise this event on social media”, I usually hear them say. However, for some reason, the noise fails to materialize and the social media presence ends up being as cold as ice.
Did social media really fail? Or could it be that the digital marketer doesn’t know her job? The answer is no.
Drawing from experience, there are two main reasons brands fail to leverage on social media for their events or products:
- They are unwilling to spend money
- They’re unwilling to do the work required
The Money Factor
For whatever reason, many brand owners actually believe that if it is on social media, then it must cost next to nothing. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Like any good investment, social media marketing costs money. What you invest is what you get in the long run (remember GIGO?).
So with little or no investment, these brand owners expect the social media manager to create some mind-blowing magic. Truth is, it’s not going to happen because in many cases, some form of advertisement is required to reach a significant audience and this costs money — I’m yet to hear of a free Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn advert.
More so, because these brands haven’t invested in the ground work for building a reputable social media brand, odds are that they would need to spend even more money to make the kind of noise they want to create.
The Ground Work Factor
Too often, brands fail to realize that digital marketing is simply part of the marketing spectrum. What that means is that digital marketing is still governed by the laws that control ‘traditional’ marketing — the basic laws of business. Like every business, building a successful brand takes time — there are no shortcuts.
What I’ve observed with many brands that want to leverage the power of social media is that they are unwilling to put in the effort required for successful social media campaigns. They are not willing to follow through the process. To them, social media is the quick fix for all their shabby business behaviors.
Like Ogilvy once quipped — the fastest way to kill a bad product is by good advertising. The same holds true for social media marketing. Social media should be an extension of your business values, ethics and all not a platform for whitewashing flawed processes.
At the heart of every successful social media campaign is good content, which unfortunately many brands are unwilling to invest in or pay for. All they want is to create buzz on social media. It’s like trying to race a car without having fuel in it.
Brands need to dissuade themselves of the illusion that social media is the place where dreams you don’t work for come true. Just like you work it out in real life, the same goes for social media — there are no shortcuts.
So if you’re looking to create a buzz for your brand, dust your bags and get ready for some real work. Be ready to invest in good content, pay for advertising (if need be), stick to a sound conversation/engagement strategy and most importantly, be in it for the long haul.
The End..
