As a marketer, you can choose not to engage in social media, but your brand will still be talked about in the space. So you have a choice: engage or not?
More and more marketers are choosing to engage; eMarketer estimates between 30 and 40 percent of advertisers are using some form of social network marketing.
Consumers love brands. And they hate them. Ten years ago, people would tell a few friends what they thought of a product or service, or they’d call a company’s toll-free number, or they’d write a letter to the editor. Unless the mainstream media wrote about a brand, word of mouth rarely scaled to a meaningful level. That’s all changed with social media.
If you’re part of the 60 to 70 percent of advertisers that aren’t using social networks, my guess is you’ve got a well-reasoned objection. I’ve spoken with many companies in your shoes. So to put your mind at ease and perhaps give you reasons to reconsider, here are the top seven reasons brands tell us why they don’t want to engage in social media and our responses.
1. We can’t control social media.
You’re absolutely right. And that’s OK. Marketers have never really been able to control what consumers say about their brands anyway. At least now you can listen to what people are saying in real time and attempt to influence those conversations.
That influence is critical because word of mouth is now word of mouse, and people trust each other more than they trust brands. According to Forrester, 83 percent of consumers trust recommendations from friends and acquaintances, and 50 percent trust online reviews from complete strangers.
2. Consumers don’t pay attention to social media/it hasn’t reached a tipping point.
With all the media hype about social media, it’s understandable that marketers are skeptical. As of 2008, however, reality has caught up with the hype. More than 220 million Americans are online. Almost half of these U.S. Internet users are regular visitors to social network sites, according to eMarketer. And 54 percent are reading blogs.
These social media users have high expectations of brands. A 2008 poll by Opinion Research Corporation showed 85 percent of social media users expect companies to have a presence in social media and interact with consumers on these sites. In addition, 41 percent felt companies should use social media to solicit feedback on their products and services.
3. Only "kids" use social media, and they aren’t our target audience.
At one time, this statement was true. Gen Y is still the majority users of social media. However, the demographics have shifted significantly in the past two years. Baby Boomers (those born 1946-1964) are the fastest growing users of social networking sites and are also increasingly reading blogs, according to the latest Consumer Electronics Usage Survey from Accenture. As of January 2009, Facebook had 18 million users between ages 25 and 54 (43 percent of its users).
4. Social media can’t be measured.
Actually, because it’s on the Web, social media is very measurable. Before measurement, however, come objectives. Brands must determine what they want social media to accomplish. Here are some examples:
- Objective: Generate awareness/drive traffic to corporate Web site
Measurement: Number of relevant conversations; friends on social networks; online groups dedicated to your brand; number of Twitter followers; tweets about your brand; referral links from other bloggers - Objective: Be a thought leader
Measurement: Number of comments on and incoming links to your blog; Google page rank; RSS feeds to your blog; number of times your posts are bookmarked on Delicious - Objective: Improve customer service
Measurement: Number of Twitter customer service interactions; time to solve issues via social media vs. phone
5. We’re a B2B company; social media is for B2C.
Business people are people. Your B2B customer is a consumer, too. She is online, reading blogs, searching Google, and probably on Facebook. And she isn’t using these tools just for fun. She’s finding industry best practices, researching products and interacting with other professionals in her category. And she makes buying decisions based on what she finds.
Forrester recently conducted a survey of 1,200 American and European corporate buyers in the technology sector and found they were reading blogs, watching user-generated video and participating in other social media, and 69 percent of them said they were using this technology for business purposes.
6. It takes too much time; we don’t have the people power.
Yes, it does take time. You can’t “set it and forget it” like other marketing tactics. But that’s precisely why it’s so valuable. Engaging with customers is what marketers do.
Author, venture capitalist and entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki said in an interview recently, you wouldn’t ask Tiger Woods, with as much time as he spends playing golf, how he finds time to practice. It’s no different for marketers; it’s our job to engage with customers, so it’s not a question of finding time, it’s a question of desire.
7. It’s too dangerous a place for brands to play.
If you’re simply not comfortable engaging yet, then do two things: 1) Conduct a comprehensive social media audit to find out where your brand is being discussed, how and by whom; 2) Set up regular monitoring to follow the ongoing conversations.
Somewhere, sometime, someone is going to say something about your brand you won’t like. If you’ve conducted an audit and you’re monitoring, at least you’ll find that comment and be able to put it into perspective and decide how to handle it.
For more tips on social media and marketing, follow my Delicious bookmarks at http://delicious.com/RisleyRanch.
