The adage about wood, trees and being too close to see them, put in a certain order makes perfect sense for social media. In the age of the social media marketer, the social media analyst and the social media optimiser the victim is, well, being social. Literally.
In post after post we read that social media is about engagement. Social media is about being personal. Social media is about storytelling and oh, yes, my personal favourite, social media is about having a conversation. So what do we see? Time after time a post is placed on a social media platform and the poster, presumably feeling that his part was done, is off.
A classic example was the latest Rush Limbaugh-Sandra Fluke debacle which did not fail to become a polarising talking point on practically every social media platform and tens of thousands of blogs. On Facebook there was a moment when NBC Connecticut asked what their 148,000 plus followers thought about Limbaugh's apology to Fluke and whether it should have been made or should the radio host have stuck to his principles?
The question was formed to foster engagement and within a twenty minute period it had gathered more than 300 comments. In the by now familiar way of social media, however, the comments were a little less constructive than NBC had expected. In particular more than half berated the News channel for asking the question in the first place with many wondering since when publicly insulting somebody was 'OK' and could be considered a 'principle'?
An argument could be made, perhaps, on whether the question was indeed formed properly but of more crucial importance is the fact that the NBC Connecticut did not respond for over six hours and by then the news of its "social media issue" had become a talking point on blog posts and Twitter.
The lesson here is that social media, which is all about conversation, cannot be implemented through traditional marketing methodology where we simply tick the boxes for using social media channels. It needs to be worked on the same way a personal social media account would and herein lies the problem. Few organisations are prepared, at the moment, to put in that kind of time and effort and even fewer small businesses have the spare capacity to, which makes social media marketing the kind of conversation where marketers ask a question and then leave the room.
Just like in real life this kind of behaviour would be classified as anti-social so, in a social media environment it fails to project the kind of image of a company or organisation which says, "Yes, we get being social". Without a doubt social media requires contact time which in itself presents a challenge, but more than that it requires time management and planning.
The company which cannot allocate a specific time to engage its audience on a social media platform and monitor and respond to what is happening, as it happen, is engaging in broadcasting rather than conversation and broadcasting, in a social media environment, always tends to backfire badly.
An article from
Filed Under:
Content Marketing