The Social Media Landscape

Social Media - a magnetic force field that is attracting marketer from all across. Of course I too was attracted towards this paradigm of marketing, but was certainly fortunate to get acquainted at a much earlier stage of its emergence. However, having opined that, I have to admit to the fact that it’s changing or rather shifting dimensions at phenomenal pace than what I or my teachers at the time could have anticipated.

Social media space just like the emergence of Internet on the face of the earth has attracted recipients and consumer, but more importantly the conversion of consumer and producers of the content. It no more producers producing content and consumers consuming. It’s more like a mashup situation where consumers have turned its biggest producers.

Surly saying that it’s a world of its own may justify some power of social media. But as they say “With great powers, comes great responsibility”. This is were I have to admit that while marketers are willing to go on board as quickly as possible on the social media bandwagon, but are they responsible with it….…unfortunately most of the them comes under the unfortunate NO bracket. It’s not an element of your checklist of marketing do’s or putting “Share This” on your webpage. It’s surly something much larger than that. It’s an art that has or needs to be integrated into science. Well…..I hope you may acknowledge its importance with my little arts and science thingy….Nevertheless….

Why should you spend your ad dollars on social media? This is one question that Sean Carton had tired to answer in his recent article “A Social Media Strategy Checklist”, which I have to admit is a good articulation in recent times on this subject of Social Media. I completely buy and echo his worries on social media and the way its being currently embraced by marketers without clear objectives, goals or strategy. Specially a Para “Why should that worry me? Because I've only rarely encountered people with actual strategies behind their social media push. Sure, plenty of clients (and prospects) I've spoken to in the past year or so made vague noises about viral video or being on Facebook or tweeting, but when I've pressed them for why they want those things, few can give me an answer”. Wonderful…..

He further articulates 10-step of social media strategy checklist (A recommended read), which is certainly an example of true cognizant thought process. However I would like to add one additional element and probably accentuate one step mentioned in the article.

One element to add is the “management commitment” or buying in into the process. Unfortunately the associations or companies that I have witnessed with this paradigm (social media) has highest failure rate due to the simple reason that management did not believed in it. Of course at initial stage it will not receive any different response that what one may have received when venture into an uncharted territory, as per your management is concern, which of course Social Media offers – “An Uncharted Territorial Media”.

Hence to ensure the success of this activity or element or what ever word you may feel appropriate for social media that the management is in agreement into your venture with high level of patience. Yes, Patience is certainly an important element of social media so called ROI. Equally, as a marketer you need to ensure a high visibility, understanding and effectiveness of the program are well fed back to the management.

This leads me to an element that was surely mentioned in the article by Sean Carton however deserves little more amplification. Its ability to monitor or analyze. I love stating that Internet is most measurable medium in the history of marketing and the only thing which is left is to measure it. Social Media much like the digital space faces the same genetic disorder or at least the symptoms in some cases . Though we (marketers) go all out to say about the measurability aspect of the digital domain to sell our idea(s), but actually how many of us do it. With my experience of working with various organizations the answer is little discouraging, needless to say in some cases horrifying.

But then for every major disease there is a vaccination on the way. Equally, I have to advocate the necessity of integrated analysis, and decision making matrix based on the same. It’s imperative to rope the management and of course largely to learn the effectiveness of the social media through analyzing or rather integrated analysis of your digital properties. This certainly could be done through your understanding the data points served by your website tracking tools, of course great offerings by Omniture could enable you to do it, and similarly with the analysis of the social media space. Equally a name that comes first to my mind is of Radien6, an effective tool for real-time social media monitoring and analysis.

Having mentioned the tools, it’s equally imperative to merge or have an integrated view of the data points of information provided by the tools, converting it to knowledge. Thus, finally providing a knowledge based matrix that would enable an effective decision making backed by numbers and not merely by judgments, intuitions and so on. However, by stating this I would not like to discount the role of judgment, intuition and similar elements played or enable decision making.

The one greater challenge that I am certainly witnessing and/or foresee for the social media space, beside its competitiveness, is its ability to change the game or the landscape at a much steeper phase than expected, which would surly not be comforting to most of the marketers, of course including me.

Hence the discovery may require discovering more (or further educating) in the space we call Social Media……