Social Media Marketing Sucks, or Your License To Print Money
It would appear that I am completely incapable of just staying away and keeping my mouth shut.
There was an excellent guest post on Copyblogger about social media skepticism by Bob Hoffman. As we are pretty big fans of skepticism here at IttyBiz HQ, I figured I’d come on out and open my pie hole.
The premise of the post is that from a marketing standpoint, social media and the internet in general are not as interactive and social as we’re making them out to be.
“But for the vast majority of internet users – the ones who don’t have blogs and don’t have their own websites – it is mostly another passive medium. And it’s getting passiver.” (Anybody who uses a word like “passiver” is welcome to stop by for a beer any time they like.)
As people with something to sell, we really, really, really want to believe that it’s this oh-so-interactive place but sadly, we’re wrong.
“It is my contention that web interactivity is continuing to grow for most every function except marketing. It is my further contention that marketing on the web is evolving very much as marketing on TV evolved – people with stuff yelling at people with money.” Cue big ass red text.
People with stuff yelling at people with money.
Many will talk shit about this article. Several already have. But I think it’s dead on and I’ll tell you why.
Go find a blog. Any blog. This one will do. Read some of the comments. (Maybe not the ones on the Stompernet review, but any other post is fine.) See who’s there.
The people who are commenting — interacting — are other bloggers. Some of them are my competitors, some of them are nearly competitors, some of them will be competitors when they’re able to quit their day job and start their own home business. Some of them just like to come here and hang out because home business on the internet is a fucking lonely business.
They are never going to buy what I sell.
The people who buy what I have to sell are generally people I wouldn’t know if they wrote their name on a frying pan and hit me in the face with it.
They will come, they will buy, they will have their problem solved. I am very lucky in that many of my clients have become friends, but they didn’t start out that way.
(From a commentator, Aura Mae: “At this point it seems more like a circle-jerk than an effective method of interacting with potential clients.”)
“…the average consumer simply does not have the time or the inclination to have conversations with marketers. Most of them, wisely, don’t have conversations with their husbands. Why in the world would they want to have conversations with us?”
Do you want to sit around and have a beer with Dell? Smirnoff? Apple? (OK, maybe Apple.) Did you wake up this morning and say, “You know, I haven’t really connected with the people who are trying to sell me shit lately. Maybe I should start a conversation. A really deep and meaningful one”?
No. You’re going to buy your fucking vodka and go home and get drunk with your real friends.
Interacting is a social activity. Buying is a commercial activity.
People in interaction mode don’t like being sold to. People looking to buy something don’t want to sit around and chat. They do not want you to be their friend.
They want you to solve their problem.
From Graham Strong:
“The Internet has the capability of increasing that communication level. Although you don’t always hear a voice, you can play a game of chess a lot easier with your friend, watch a YouTube video, etc. Do all this *while* on the phone, and you increase your interactivity even more.”
Absolutely. Extremely interactive and cool. But when I’m playing chess with my blog pack, I’m not whipping out my credit card to buy whatever the banner ads are selling. I’m busy hanging out playing chess with my friends.
From Rick-with-no-url:
“Just because you can’t figure out a way to market to those audiences doesn’t mean they’re not interacting. It just means that maybe they don’t want to interact with someone trying to sell or pitch something to them, instead of honestly contributing to their conversation.”
From Hayes Thompson:
“The number of ‘harnessing the marketing power of social networks’ articles I read last year. Not one could say how. We all love passing around this viral or that link. But are they shifting product? I saw a Vodafone web page streaker the other day. Funny for 2 seconds but it did nothing to stop me signing another 18 month contract with my current network.”
Dead on. If I hear one more thing about harnessing the power of social media… well, I won’t say that in print.
The take-away point and the real way to make money online:
Theoretically, socializing and buying can go hand in hand. Practically, they don’t. Your real market doesn’t have a clue who you are. They don’t know you, let alone like you. They are not your friends. They are busy and stressed out and in need of a product or service and they don’t have time to sit around and talk to you. Stop trying to “harness the power of social media” and start solving problems. Solve real problems and you have a license to print money.
Next Post: Work from Home Reason # 33
You know, in some ways this takes the pressure of social media off.
I mean, it’s good to interact and all, but in my case it’s easy to get overwhelmed with everything. Knowing that I don’t HAVE to have my customers walk into my site as though we were all characters on the tv show Cheers is a relief. Finding my way through so much that is new to me is hard enough…being an introvert figuring out how to build a community online is harder…navigating the morass that is social media, well….that one keeps me up at night.
Hear, hear!! Preach on sister. I am tired of being yelled out on the web by the equivalent of the OxyClean guy. Bloggers, in general, don’t buy from the ads on other blogs. Unless it is for maybe the ProBlogger book.
The “conversation” is not between seller and buyer, but between buyers. And buyers are now media participants and producers.
So, you watch what the buyers say. And you hopefully influence what the buyers say or decide to go in a certain direction based on what the buyers say.
Valuable content is what people want in commercial situations, not conversation. Once you have their attention, you’re more likely to sell something.
Anything beyond that is largely utopian silliness. But it’s still a pretty big thing.
Bulls-eye.
I’ve bought from fewer than 20% of the bloggers I read most days, and I never would’ve found these services/products if I hadn’t stumbled into (not upon, I don’t SU) these conversations. But there are very few whose blog ACTIONS really sell me on their products/services. I love what I’ve bought, like to support, have no regrets, and will buy again, but that’s not what this space is about. (And I’m so critical that many blogs show me why NOT to buy from their writer.)
But I get a different experience when I stop in here than I get when I have to fit a grocery run into a busy day. Here, it’s like a library where you can party (and I don’t even drink.) Learning between the stacks, as it were. A very cool library with a bunch of interesting people circulating. It’s social; it’s media; but libraries don’t sell much.
My google reader is like a farmer’s market: every ’stall’ offers a different voice, but it’s more about the strolling and browsing on a sunny morning, kibitzing, admiring, and seeing what others are doing, than it is about buying stuff.
IttyBiz is one of the very best stalls on the internet souk and I’d buy a subscription to it — but when we look at our own behavior (do YOU buy over the net from those you read?) it translates to real life: do you buy from your buddies? (Different from becoming buds with clients or sellers.) Usually no.
Thanks for reminding us that the social media emperor has no clothes, (but does have a great bod to stare at!)
@ AmyL — Yes indeedy. It’s scary shit and overwhelming for the non-spam-o-rama types.
@ Michael — I’d totally forgotten about the OxyClean guy!! I love it.
@ Brian — First off, when I’m looking for my next tagline, “largely utopian silliness” is going to be a contender. Have you ever considered copywriting, by any chance? You’d be really good at it. :)
You’re dead on on the buyer-to-buyer conversations. I didn’t get the trial for TS because you told me to. I got it because someone else told me to.
But the tragedy is so many wannabe internet marketers are hearing “interactive” and their eyeballs are turning into comic book style dollar signs. Like, “Holy shit, I just need to kick some StumbleUpon ass and I’ll be booked solid! I’ll be turning people away! I’ll have to change my phone number because of all of the adoring fans begging to hear my voice.” (OK, maybe that last one’s just me.)
Thanks for stopping by!
@ GirlPie — I have nothing intelligent to add to your comment. Right on, dude.
Hmmm. Buyer-to-buyer. Wow. That really helps too. And takes more pressure off, yay! I’m all for being a hostess in the background and just having a nice place for people to hang out (as Naomi does here).
So. The question for me to ponder at 3am is no longer how to communicate with people directly but rather how to get them talking about me?
Quick! Somebody start a rumor!!
Naomi, I’d be honored if that became your tagline. :-)
>>The question for me to ponder at 3am is no longer how to communicate with people directly but rather how to get them talking about me?
Amy, that’s what that Seth Godin guy keeps saying over and over. :-)
First of all, FANTASTIC post.
I agree and disagree. I think you should have split this into two posts - one for businesses like yours and one for products. Because I think they are completely different and use online social networks in completely different ways. I am 100% with you on products.
For service businesses, I think you’re overlooking a key audience - partners and referral sources. A lot of the people reading here are your competition, but there are also a lot of people whose business might refer to yours. I have referred my cients to Christine O’Kelly for copywriting, based 100% on “knowing” her via her blog. There are probably copywriters or designers who read your blog who might refer their clients or associates to you.
Also for me social networking is a great way to keep in touch with my real life network, who I am absolutely get business from. There are people that I sub-contract for or receive referrals from who I am friends with on twitter or facebook. If I didn’t keep up with these people online we would probably see each other twice a year. But due to “seeing” each other online we are kept top-of-mind for referrals or partnership opportunities.
[blushing] And people who read that Seth Godin guy’s stuff know that, don’t they? I’ll have to subscribe, huh?
I really appreciate your comment Laura, because you’ve added to my perspective.
Of course now I think I can go back to worrying about managing social media in the dark of night. Sigh. I’m glad there are so many options but at the same time it’s so much to keep track of. It sounds like your social media platforms of choice (Twitter, Facebook) merge with your business activities. I don’t think I’ve arrived at that level of competence yet. :)
Interesting. I started my own blog not really looking to make it a business tool, but it wound up sneaking around through the back door and becoming one. I think that chance happening might have more to do with the fact that I’m a writer, and writing in any form demonstrates to a potential client that I can, you know, write.
You’ve got a different thing going on. Part of your business is writing, but most of it is knowing how to run a small business. I think demonstrating that knowledge is probably a little more difficult for you than for me. I can show off writing skills even when I’m talking about llamas and why I want one. You have to tell stories about business-running for us to know that you have those skills, so it might be bad for you to spend time on the llama question.
I’m just saying I’d read it in a heartbeat, and would think, wow, this llama-hater can totally run a business.
I know you hate the llamas. Don’t lie.
There’s also the blogging world and then the real world. I was surprised that Darren Rowse makes tons more money on his camera blog than he does from Problogger, because I tend to indulge the delusion that our tiny little corner of virtual reality is the world. It is not. But there is still cash to be made & product to be moved from this conversation thing when you get out of the Internet marketing/blogging ghetto.
Is a blog + community the *best* way to sell? Probably not, for most products/services. But it can be done–we just need to get the hell away from each other and look at the rest of the Web.
My hunch is that it’s more about content than interactivity. A steady stream of thoughtful content that *feels* like a relationship is not actually very interactive for most customers, but it feels like it is and it can be a killer sales tool. Again, it probably works better outside of the blogging world–use it to sell koi ponds or organic knitting or something, not to sell “how to make money online.”
Brian nails it (of course)–90% of the time, the important conversation is the one people are having *about* you. If you think that can’t be influenced, you need to try harder. Like the lady said, let’s give ‘em something to talk about.
P.S. So if your customers aren’t finding you here, where do they find you? Just curious.
@ Sonia — Oh, they only find me here. They just don’t dive into the conversation first. They send emails through the contact form that say, “Hi, I’m Joe Blow. You don’t know me but I’ve been reading your blog forever.”
And it never ceases to amaze me. I’m like, oh, shit. I DON’T actually know the first name, last name and dog’s name of every person who reads this blog. Who knew?
The buyer and seller do need to be able to converse. The seller calls this conversation selling. I may want to be able to have something like a real conversation with a seller, but I’m not going to invite him into my house, give him the guest room, and cook breakfast for him.
Every weekend in my town is the local farmer’s market. I know these people. I have conversations with them, and I buy from them. Some of them will suggest recipes and talk about best ways to prepare the food. It doesn’t seem like selling, but before I know it, I’ve happily bought more than I intended to. That was a conversation, but it was also a masterful sales job.
Now, which do you think is going to do a better job of selling in a similar fashion, a brochureware site (great copy or no), or a site with a blog and a social media presence?
That is ridiculous. Just becuase someone is unable to market with social media does not mean it sucks.
Mentos U.S. VP of Marketing, estimated the value of buzz generated by social media to be over $10 million.
March of the Penguins generated $100 million in revenue, and Warner Bros. attributes 25% of the film’s revenue to a single podcast.
Target has achieved success with Facebook in their back to school marketing, and Proctor & Gamble’s internal assessment purports that every dollar in social media is four times as effective as the same dollars spent on television.
That’s it! We’ll sell vegetables online!
All we need is a bunch of vans and maybe a sock puppet for a spokesperson. :-)
Just messing with you Michael. I like the analogy of the traditional marketplace… in fact I’ve used it many times myself.
But for big companies, real conversation doesn’t scale. Hell, it doesn’t scale for most small businesses, frankly.
And the other thing… we don’t want to talk to corporations. Corporations are not people, even though they are made up of people. I don’t care about conversing with Apple, even though I love Apple products. Just keep making cool shit and let me know when I can buy it, thank you very much.
See the difference? Conversation is a metaphor, and how it’s applied varies from business to business. I think this recent backlash has to do with the marketing 2.0 folks being just a tad too literal and idealistic.
So yes, blog. But it’s just smart content and relationship marketing, assuming your blog is mostly about your readers instead of your company. When it comes to commerce, I’d rather spark a conversation than join one any day.
In my mind, marketing through social media is the exact same as marketing at a sporting event.
People are using social media (sports) to pass some time, be entertained, and be immersed in an environment different than their own. This environment could be filled to the brim with court-side advertisements and logo-emblazoned blimps, but I am not going to get my tires at the baseball game, nor am I going to do so while poking friends and writing comments on people’s walls.
Marketing for some reason has always come from the angle of trying to distract someone from what they are actually doing to bring a message across. In what ways can we make experiencing marketing the thing that people are wanting to do? Is that even a possibility?
When I am quiet, as I am now, I am usually thinking. Rather than say something impulsive I haven’t thought over properly, I’m just going to drop a comment to get that subscribe to comment feature going on and leave it at that.
I will say this - maybe it’s not so much about who’s talking to who or who’s screaming about who, but more about who is treating who in a respectful, equal relationship manner.
Relationships first. Money second.
Cool, Naomi, that is what I figured. I would submit that the conversation was probably (at least sometimes) part of what sold those customers, even though they participated in it just as bystanders. Then there will be another huge chunk who came for the content, and never read comments–but that post content still feels like a conversation even though their side is only in their heads.
I’m thinking we as bloggers may want to distinguish between our commenters and our customers. It is perfectly OK if those are two completely distinct groups. Commenters allow us to expand our thinking, they make the writing more interesting to read (remember Alice in Wonderland, who wanted books with “pictures and conversation”?), and they entertain the customers. Nothing wrong with any of that.
Southwest Airlines takes that same concept and does it huge. So does Sun. I don’t accept that this isn’t a model that can scale, although I also don’t think it works everywhere.
There’s also a lot of corporate listening to the general social media conversation to find new ways to make offers and talk to customers about what matters to them. I think it’s perfectly legit for a company like Proctor & Gamble to mostly “talk” through ads and packaging. If social media informs that conversation, I personally still think it counts.
And god knows it’s an improvement over some sweaty flak hired by P&G’s agency to hang around on blogs and pretend to “grok” the “conversation” with the “hip young people.”
OK, I realize the irony of using the stone-age term “grok” there, but I don’t know what the hip young people say.
I think Bob H. is wildly entertaining and I love how he writes. “People with stuff yelling at people with money” is worth the price of admission. But I also think that Brian C. is more on the money–this conversation thing is a metaphor that varies depending on where it’s happening.
To take little pieces of it out of context and decide that “social media marketing is all bullshit” is probably not a smart bet. And just because the Fortune 100 thought they could get on Facebook & double their market share doesn’t mean we have to be (or are) that dumb.
It’s all about expectations. I agree that the passive users on the web are not going to be as social and maybe not but a product and therefore social marketing towards them is useless . Although I run into people everyday that are researching products in my industry every single day and it is a force, they want exactly what they see online. Unfortunately due to the borderless nature of the internet it’s not always possible but that’s a whole different rant. I think some things that people don’t realize is how much the social types influence those around them in “RL” that are not online. I bout an MM50 iPod speaker dock a while back under the influence of a podcast I hear raving about it and just last month my Dad wanted one to give as a gift and guess what I reccomended!
Measuring response to a marketing campaign has always been a grey area to me, and I think in the social economy it only getting harder and that’s just one thing marketers and their clients are going to have to accept.
Conversation isn’t the solution to all marketing problems for sure but it has a role. And the internet makes it easier.
Back in the ’90s we worked for a major telco. We sent a direct mail package to best customers every quarter. Included in the package was a BRC with four survey questions. Now we were interested in the answers but it was really about starting a dialog. In subsequent mailings we told these best customers how people responded to the questionnaire and what the telco was doing with the information. Another four questions was included.
Attrition among respondents was 60% lower than the control who did not receive the BRC. Some of this is a tautology but 60%! Among customers who received the BRC and didn’t respond attrition was down 40%.
The act of attempting a conversation, of demonstrating that the telco was interested in their opinion and responsive to the opinions when given, had a significant impact on their behavior.
Rereading the post (as I often do after a wild comment stream) I land on Naomi’s smart “solve problems” directive. That’s key.
And Laura’s smart comment, of which I can only agree with the first half, helps me look at one of my own previously-unidentified problems: what to reply when asked for referrals to other services I don’t provide (or are within a smaller budget, etc.)
Linked-in, Twitter, Facebook and AllTop help provide me with NAMES of potentials to refer out business to (or to hire/buy for myself), but only the blogs and the conversation they create allow me to really see the work of a P2R2 (”person to refer to?”) IN ACTION.
That makes a big difference in retaining my good reputation. Plus the social medial has solved my problem, and I’ve become a hero for solving a client’s problem. Thanks Laura, for the great POV on Naomi’s sharp assessment — chime in more often.
Naomi,
I love people who agree with me. When do I get my beer?
This doesn’t add to anything, but holy crap. Most of the comments on here are just as informative as the post. Especially Tei’s. I had no idea Naomi hated llamas.
:)
To sell you have to target suspects and make cold calls. Target is the key principle. On the web we wait for someone out of the millions of users to find us. Having a communications path to millions of people doesn’t make connecting with the right ones any easier. I think we expect to much from the Internet. The best of us make the Internet an extension of our persona but we still have to seek someone out to make a connection. The Internet is a valuable tool but not a replacement for the hard work of sales. The real value of the Internet comes after we’ve initiated a connection with a client.
@George - With all respect, George, you have it exactly backwards. On the internet, you target prospects with content. Prospects employ search and filters in various ways to get to you. If your content is properly targeted they will find you. There are cold calls on the web, except it’s your clients who make them by filling out an online form to contact you.
The real value of the internet is that it allows a client to safely build trust in us through our content (including blogs and social media), which leads to contact. At that point, you’ve already done all your selling, and now you’re just closing the deal. Now the real relationship begins.
My blogging is all pose prose.
Rarely do I meet a client leader-person who has read my posts but I generally find that one person in the client management team has bothered to figure out who I am before I get there and comment. I appreciate that.
If they do read it, I simply want them to know that I’m aware of what is available to them and I’m an informed resource. Simple things like Google Alerts and Tiny URL, stuff like that. And it keeps me on the front page of Google search for my selected keywords.
So, for me, blogging is kind of like the clean, white shirt/jacket and jeans I wear to the opening client meeting. Part of who I want them to confidently know I am as a problem solver / solutions guy for them. My clients tend to come to me because someone they met who talked about what we did for them. The best way.
Thanks for this post and the comments. Good thinkin’ goin’ on here!
smiles, rudy
Naomi,
When Bob wrote this article at Copyblogger, I was stunned at its brilliance. I am again, and a little surprised people don’t see the main point.
Bob did not say you can’t find money through conversation. He didn’t say you can’t sell to other Internet-engaged people like yourselves. You can.
He said this ain’t how it works for most people. And it’s not.
If what you do is tied somehow to what other 2.0-ready people do, great. If you can tie it in (copywriting, p.r., toilet paper if you can find a way), great. You can have their dollars.
If you want Uncle Joe Normal who Googles “where can I find a cheaper hockey stick?” literally, thinking the web well tell him how to get away from his price-gouging pro shop, your blog is never going to work. Neither is Twitter. Twitter is what birds and Aunt Susan do, to Joe. Your conversation, no matter where you have it or how utterly fascinating, is useless.
Will I read less Copyblogger, or Gateway Blogging, or any of the others because of it? No—maybe the phrase Aunt Susan will search for when her café is going down in flames will come to me as Michael Martine inspires me. (Naomi, nothing could make me stop reading IttyBiz. Now that I’m over the IttySwearing.)
I got stuff, and I want to yell at people with money. I love that my blog allows me to do that in a way that works more subtly than a New York Times ad, and costs less monthly than the aforementioned toilet paper. To Susan, it’s a long, long AD. To be a bit more kind, it’s a long, long pitch, that she gets to customize to the message she wants to hear.
If that sounds like I’m agreeing in part, I’m not.
Most of the time, Susan doesn’t want to hear any message at all. She definitely doesn’t want to be part of one.
Susan will have a better chance of reading my blog if she finds out about it through another client than if she Googles it, because most people don’t have any idea of what a blog is or how to use it. Don’t believe me? Check this out: Four of 10 Americans read blogs. Only four out of ten U.S. adults has read a blog. Of those, almost 70% view blogs once a month or less. They call this a big improvement, but that is not a conversation!
If she finds out about it through RL word-of-mouth, she’ll take one look, decide I’m okay if I write all that, and call me or use my contact form.
If she sits around and lurks, most of the time, I’m not gonna get her business at all. She’s decided I’m like a mag delivered daily, and she’ll take my help silently and go the D-I-Y route. She’s a forever-lurker. She is NOT going to join in the conversation, anymore than I talk to Norm Abrams when he’s building cabinetry on The New Yankee Workshop. (Well, sometimes I do, but Norm doesn’t seem to mind.)
Of course, I try to find her pain points and talk to them, whether she’s just finding me on the web or she’s already joined the lurker ranks. My company can solve her problem and I’d like her to know that. I write my finest musings, to engage her. I do my darnedest to make the comments flow beautifully, in case the day comes when she wants to be a part. (Once it’s in her email inbox [RSS? what's that?], Susan may never realize she can comment. Click through? Why?)
We are having conversations. Great ones. Squirmy, loving, frolics and dorm-room debates. Not with folks who plan to hand us cash. They’re out there in the ether, and to them the web is a very static place.
Oh, Naomi, I’m never speechless here. Hope that’s okay with you.
Regards,
Kelly
@Kelly - a couple old proverbs come to mind:
Nobody wants to be sold, but everyone loves to buy.
And:
People don’t want a drill, they want a hole.
MM: Two of my faves.
Hi Naomi, I am late to the party (as usual) and would like to add my $0.02.
I don’t think that a business or blogger can “harness the power of social media” any more than a person with a surfboard harnesses the power of the tide.
What the surfer does do is gauge the strength of the tide, spot the currents, and pick a wave to get in front of. Then they paddle like crazy in front of the swell and ride it in to shore in a dramatic fashion.
They can’t really control the direction, nor can they know exactly where that wave is going to take them. Surfing doesn’t scale, either, only so many people can fit on one wave.
That’s how social media works. It’s bigger than the sum of it’s parts.
The trick to social media is to find the tide (market) that is your customer base and read the waves (conversation). Get out in front of the wave (offer value) that looks strongest and start paddling (sell a kick-a$$ product/service).
To build on Michael’s comment, if everybody is talking about holes, you need to get out there with some drills.
People are so weird.
I love that people are so distracted - I think it improves my biz chances. Shhhhh………don’t be telling people social media sucks - we so want them out there “worrying” about it. Their fears keep them buying online. Fear is awesome and it works so well. Don’t get too wrapped up online that you start buying into it yourself (Stompernet) …..or start doubting what you really believe and know to be true - that’s our best kept secret. Take a break sometimes to get your real perspective back. Fine line b/w creating it (fear) and living it (think GW Bush). Step back - offline - and regroup.
The bridge. There’s a bridge somewhere between offline and on. We were having this conversation at Liz’s this week too. It is easy to get distracted by all the nice responses and comments and forget , wait, our real customers, are we really reaching them? Does this work? I have been following this conversation between Bob and Sonia, Bob and Brian and now Naomi et al. It’ s an extremely important one. Here’s why. Aren’t we able to shape directions? Aren’t we able to find tools, many different tools, and create combinations or innovative ways to use them, or take a look and say hm, we might really need a tool that does this, as well as that? How can we do that? Or hm, here’s a gap. What could we use there?
So what could we use here? Hmm, that sounds a lot like … solving a problem. Hm. Maybe someone will bring out content on that. What is that saying? It’s archaic: build a better mousetrap. Aren’t we sort of “early” adopters? That’s kind of like leadership, isn’t it?
Or maybe it is a finite tool and we are in a small echo chamber. Well that makes me feels constricted. We’ll need to drill a hole.
Just some thoughts. :)
Really liking all your posts so far!
So, I think you are absolutely right in the sense that provide value = get money! On that note, 80% of our clients have come to us through our blog. We offer services-no products. You can leverage your blog to provide value.
On the blog-there are no sales pitches. Just solid marketing information.
I am on most of the social media sites. I just threw something up to “represent”. I spend no time on them. I think they are distractions. I also have never received any business from them. Other people have tried to sell me products on the sites though. That being said, one of my friends got a “keynote” speech gig from one of the sites so it’s working for her. I do know that Twitter sucks! I have nothing interesting to say, “wiped my kid’s poopy butt, ate a sandwich” (not necessarily in that order). Who cares? The only cool twittering i’ve seen is from my nephew because he is in the music industry. “Hung out with Gwen and Snoop Dog backstage” - now that is cool. Of course he’s hung out with so many musicians I have never heard of that he is probably “uber” cool. He seems to work the “twitter” thing well. But most people put dumb shit on their twitters just like me. Social Media-bah humbug!
@Janice - That gap is what we’re addressing at Gateway Blogging.
Hi Michael- I sorta thought so. One more tester coming up. :)
I think it really breaks down to what you want to use social media for. ALL marketing should have an end result in mind.
One of my strengths (and that I coach my clients on) is networking. I do almost no advertising, except through networking. I attend several networking events offline each week. I develop business relationships with people, they get to know me, and then they refer me. Or, when the time comes that they realize they need help marketing their business, I am the first one that comes to mind.
Likewise, online marketing and blogging is the same. I blog so that people can get to know me, and my style. I give good information in my blog, and so people can use that to decide if I know what I am talking about and if I am a good fit for them.
There are a ton of “experts” floating around. By blogging, we can show people that we deserve that title. I know a guy offline who is a “copywriter,” because he used to write technical manuals for a science company. But he knows nothing about marketing. Hence, his copy is bland, boring, and terrible.
So, social media have a place and a purpose. I don’t believe it is to have an in depth conversation, but rather to just have a rudimentary interaction, which can open the door to deeper one-on-one interaction.
>>To sell you have to target suspects and make cold calls.
The whole reason I got into content marketing 10 years ago was because I CANNOT and WILL NOT cold call. Just not something I can do.
So far, so good.
You guys are all much too clever for me. I’ve read this post a few times and enjoyed reading all of the interesting comments on this subject a lot.
For us, social media marketing has a really really low return in respect to how much time we put in. MySpace and Facebook are pretty much pointless in that respect and Linkedin is so-so. I’ve really been wondering lately if I’m just doing something wrong or not spending enough time on all this stuff. I’m sure there are people that can do it, but for me, it seems largely like a waste of time. The web design market is so saturated anyway. If I had to find a web designer using a social media network, I’d be so overwhelmed. How can you figure out who’s the right fit for you with all that noise?
Hubby and I have discussed a lot about what direction to take with our blog. To be honest, at the moment, it could use a lot of work. We don’t post often and personally I think I could improve my writing skills a lot. But, I don’t want to be a blogger, I want to make great websites. Plus, if we write often about web design and illustration topics, that’s just going to attract other designers and illustrators. We could get work from them subcontracting, but not much and that’s not really our goal. So, we figured the blog could be a place where potential clients and existing clients who are interested in us can get a feel for how we are as people and where we can demonstrate our expertise. I think that’s more practical for us than expecting it to bring in sales alone.
So, the conclusion that we’ve come to is that we really need to figure out what our target client is. It sounds so basic, but it’s being very difficult for us. We have general ideas of the type of people we want to work with, but where they exist and in what industries is another matter. I think if you can narrow down your target and then find ways to communicate with them directly, both online and off and you’ve got something they need, you’ve pretty much got it made. At least it seems to me that would be more practical than putting up a bunch of blog posts, spending all day on twitter/facebook/myspace/linkedin, and trying to cast a wide net and catch anything that gets in there.
I’d like to know how Naomi managed to get Brian C back here not twice but three times…
[...] statement going against the tide of popular opinion, yet evidencing truth that we can’t deny. Naomi Dunford applauds him, and so do I. Especially for his pithy revelation that the internet, as a marketing tool, is fast [...]
Wrote a post inspired by this one - http://roederstudios.com/blog/2008/offline-networking-via-online-networking/
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