Social Crapola is not the promised land
Social Media Marketing as the promised land
Marketing guru’s, renowned Research Institutes and famous bloggers are preaching about social media, tribes and virtual social communities as the promised land for marketing.
Marketing people are encouraged to embrace all kinds of methods and tools to stimulate and engage customers, potential customers and to aim for followers and advocates by their newly appointed social media consultants.
Software development companies imagine and rush to market all kinds of possible web services and tools to support the marketing guru’s.
Even the President of the United States Barack O’bama has used a social media strategy in his campaign to show the way.
However how realistic is this social marketing ?
The people who have most time to kill on the Internet are not the decision makers or influencers you need for your business as these social media participants are:
- People wasting their time on the Internet instead of working (if they have a job)
- Vendors trying to sell their stuff to your audience
- Your competitors trying to steal audience away from you
It is feasible to follow, track and even score your social media marketing using all kinds of tools or even a social CRM.
The reality of business is different: crapola
If you have a small mom and pop store in B2B you will know every customer thus no need to engage online with virtual individuals.
If you work for a medium sized company the knowledge of your customer group will be lesser and your leads are already visiting your website (you just need to know the companies visiting)
If you work in a large corporation engaging into social media will be even more cumbersome due to all the hurdles of communication limitations and required approvals before publishing any content.
Buyers, decision makers and influencers in businesses are not into social media for following your company and supporting your company as they might do for their new gizmo from Apple or a new web app for personal ego. However they will use the Internet for searching new solutions and information how to solve or avoid problems.
Social media marketing might turn out to be Social Crapola for you in B2B:
- No audience
- No followers
- No conversation
- No engagement
- No advocates
As nobody really cares about your B2B products or solutions as they are reliable, valuable, beneficial and come with proven technology. Nothing exciting – Boring as it just works fine !
Still Social Media Strategy can play a role in getting found or getting found before your competitor by ranking higher or in more occasions in searches on the Internet.
The more they view your brand name the more likely to create interest and trust.
The business of social media
In the meantime marketing guru’s, research institutes, bloggers, consultants, software and web developers have found a new source of income: a self supporting revenue generation method. Allowing them invoicing you by guiding and leading you into the unknown promised land of social media marketing using a lot of crapola.
