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Posted by Tamir on December 15, 2009
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Social media is a process, not an event
This is something Seth Godin wrote last week: “The reason social media is so difficult for most organizations: It’s a process, not an event. Dating is a process. So is losing weight, being a public company and building a brand. On the other hand, putting up a trade show booth is an event. So are going public and having surgery. Events are easier to manage, pay for and get excited about. Processes build results for the long haul.”
So many Australian brands are treating social media as an event and looking for campaigns with quick fixes – Once the campaign is over so does the conversation. Treating social media like advertising could cost you like Toyota’s spokesman Mike Breen found out this week when a UGC ad for the Yaris got some heat. Mike, how about treating social media as a customer service medium instead of an advertising medium?
Social media is also called Earned media because you have to earn it. You can’t buy it. This is also why we treat most our social media as processes not events. We call this: Social Business Strategy and if you want an example try Melbourne’s GPO case study here.
Related posts:
- Social business strategy – Telstra's social media survey is a step in the right direction
- The difference between social media and media that is social
- 13CABS use social media strategy to pick up customers.
- Are you ready to ride the Social Media Roller-coaster?
- Marketing Social Media Now
So many ‘experts’ out there right now are talking about SEO and social media… It’s tough to tell who/what is right.
Yes Mark it seems anyone with a facebook profile is a social media expert. Here are three questions to help you separate the snake charmers from the real deal:
1. Do they practice what they preach? do they have a blog/twitter and use it regularly with proven results? when did they start blogging? (anything 2 years and above is acceptable)
2. Do they do something else other than “social media” – whats their background? do they know about branding/marketing in general?
3. Are they treatingg social media as a magic pill? If so, walk away. Social media is hard work.
Hope this helps.
I see this all the time in SEO. A company wants to know exactly what will be done to get a specific ranking. They want to know how quickly you can do it. And they want to know if it’s done yet. Proper SEO is really a lot like social media. Yes, there are technical things to do to the pages, but most of the work is geting the word out about the site and its content, convincing bloggers and others to link back to the client’s content.