I'm conflicted about social media.
On one hand, I enthusiastically believe it has the potential to be a powerful and effective way to reach people and consumers in new and different ways. On the other hand, I have my reservations about how social media is being hyped and sold as the best thing since sliced bread.
To me, one of the biggest issues with social media is the obsession with strategy, tactics and tools. Not that they are a bad thing but strategy provides a plan of what to do, tactics offers details on how to do it, and the tools let you do social media.
The problem is the embrace of strategy, tactics and tools aren't enough to be successful with social media. To make social media truly effective, you also need content and compelling stories. These elements make it possible to build relationships and engage with people in a public forum.
Many companies, however, don't succeed with social media because they can't or don't embrace content and story telling. They work hard at social media by following the strategic and tactical recommendations provided by consultants or internal resources but the tools at their disposal don't seem to have any magic in them.
At the end of the day, many companies simply give up, and dismiss social media as overblown. To them, social media is the emperor with no clothes. The emperor thinks he looks great but there's no substance to support it.
One of the problems is the social media landscape is loaded with unrealistic expectations. The success stories, which at this stage are few and far between, are celebrated, caressed and sold as what could be. Truth be told, there aren't that many successes to be celebrated given how many companies are now using social media.
In many ways, social media reminds me of 1996/1997 when the Web first started to emerge into the mainstream. Companies were scrambling to get onto the Web so they happily paid tens of thousands of dollars to someone who could HTML to build a static Web site with a handful of pages. Looking back, it is easy to see how these Web sites barely scratched the surface of what was possible.
The same goes for social media. There are lots of people selling social media as the new, amazing medium, and lots of companies happily jumping on the bandwagon without realizing most of the services being sold only get them halfway down the road to success.
This may be part of social media's evolution but it's really about time there was a lot more focus and attention on content, creativity and great stories. If you look at some of the companies that have done well with social media - Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, T-Mobile, Blendtec - content is a key part of the mix. Yet, the market doesn't seem ready or willing to embrace content as much as strategy, tactics and tools.
