Please don’t talk about a social media ‘revolution’. Not just yet.
It was great to see so many people at my seminar at Online Information 2008 in London today – people even stood to endure me, so thanks for that! I spoke about how you can revolutionise your marketing with social media (and how the term revolution is over-used at the moment!) Giving examples of people who are doing it well and a five-point plan for any brand to implement. You’ll have to catch me somewhere else to enjoy my slides in glorious technicolour, but for those who couldn’t make it, I thought I’d write a little about what I was talking about.
At most marketing conferences I’ve been to over the last couple of years (and probably for longer back than that) it seems everybody is talking about two things:
- That people are talking about your brand right now.
- That social media has revolutionised marketing.
The former is true. And it always has been. The latter isn’t really true yet.
Whilst there are many examples of people doing really great things in social media (from the Fisk-A-Teers, to MyStarbucksIdea and even our own online communities for brands from Butlins to Vitabiotics), these are currently more the exception than the rule. There is a lot of other great stuff going on in social media, and some really innovative marketing, but it is not really a revolution. That would see a shift-change in the way we approach marketing. Whilst it may be great, a lot of what’s going on is doing old things in new ways rather than doing really new things.
One of the core parts of social media is about the shift from the one-to-one (or one-to-many) publishing model to a model where the community of people online add to and grow content. Some might add a photo, another geo-tag it, another post it to a group in Flickr…and so on. A lot of what seems to be talked about at marketing conferences is using social media to do things in the old way. We need more of the new way – and this means working with the communities online, be they ones that exist already or building your own online community.
Only when this type of engagement marketing is the norm will we really have a revolution.
Some more reading
- Social capital and building a quality social graph
- Marketing Webinar Shares 5 Ways Brand Relationships Must Evolve Through Social Media During the Recession
- FreshNetworks social media diary 31/10/2008 – Amex
- Three approaches for social media marketing
- What Does The Agency Of The Future Look Like To You?
- Social Media Rules of Engagement
Simon Young:
Nice post Matt. I agree that social media hasn’t caused a revolution, the revolution has been going on for much longer. Social media is a symptom.
The move towards social media started as early as the 1940s, when traditional community started changing, and mass media became more important. (More thoughts on that here: http://ijump.co.nz/rob-kozinets-on-the-origin-of-online-communities/)
4 December 2008, 1:10 amTom Vanlerberghe:
Hi Matt,
On the other hand people use the term ‘revolution’ when they feel that something has to change. And maybe the dominance of traditional media has to change? Maybe the way CEO’s think about ‘that thing online’? I agree that it isn’t a revolution yet, but something is changing in the way we look at how we have to communicate to customers. Like Simon said, mass media became more important after WWII, but I think it settled itself in a fake state of ease, and maybe this (social media) is the counterrevolution?
And maybe ‘revolution’ is just a term marketers made their own and we all overused it and made it meaningless.
grtz
4 December 2008, 6:01 pmTom
Calvin Jones:
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the link back the the “Social Media Rules of Engagement” post on the SOHO Solo West Cork blog.
You’re absolutely right, of course… people have always talked about their experiences and perception of brands. The real shift now is that instead of talking to five or six of their mates down the local pub they’re discussing those experiences and perceptions with tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands online. And so what was a small scale local phenomenon now has the potential to transcend the traditional boundaries of geography and culture.
People often get hung up on technology when discussing social media and other channels for online marketing and consumer engagement. What they tend to forget is that all of this technology is just an enabler. It’s not about the technology at all, it’s still just people talking to other people.
Social media may not have revolutionised marketing just yet — but it certainly has the potential to change things fairly radically. We’re moving from a traditional show-and-tell model of product promotion to a much more inclusive and collaborative approach. Like any period of transition there are tremendous opportunities out there, particularly for smaller businesses that are nimble, flexible and daring enough to adapt. Change can be painful for large organisations — which means smaller businesses have the chance to take advantage the constantly evolving challenges of online marketing and steal a march on their larger competition.
Whether they actually do so in significant numbers remains to be seen… but the potential is certainly there.
Interesting times, I guess
Calvin!
5 December 2008, 10:54 amFreshNetworks Blog » Blog Archive » A history of marketing, advertising and brands (a video):
[...] really what we’re seeing through the changes the video highlights. There is much talk about a social media revolution (and we’ve written before about why that’s not quite the right word), whereas what we [...]
26 January 2009, 7:53 pm