Savannah W-ITS

Soooo many new/newer ’social media’ webs are missing a simple key – a passionate purpose.  If you start a social web presence and your intent is simply to make money (either from product sales or perhaps with a goal to sell your new, hot domain) then I predict that you may not find satisfaction (or a buyer for your product.)

With what seems like every television station, celebrity and business announcing that they have joined the large social media sites I suggest that folks stop for a minute.  The social web rant is to “continue the conversation.”  I think that good businesses have been doing just that for ages – connecting with customers with both traditional and newer mediums as they evolve (companies with products and services that are multi-generational.)

The commercial draw for the larger social media sites is targeted advertising; these sites require users to provide significant amounts of personal preferential information – this information is used to provide advertisers with a highly targeted audience.  While I am sure that some users provide less than accurate information I am equally sure that the majority of users naively provide significant amounts of real information.  News flash – this is NOT new; what is new is that the previous methods for gathering this type of information have almost been replaced with Internet solutions – which bring even more data to the data collectors/resellers at a reduced cost as well as at the speed of the Net (.i.e. ‘now’, as quickly as possible given the technologies used and data mining strategies employed.)

I recently came across a post by Oliver Reichenstein [there is always some level of comfort when you find agreement with (at least) some of your thinking (i.e. previous posts about email, the price of free, branding)] titled, “Social Media Marketing. Kaboom, Baby.”  Oliver’s position is that social media marketers are spammers (their message is not providing value); their web material/postings are simply a means to bring attention to their product/service or the product/service of their client(s). [Note that the post contains a link to a video with a re-mixed/replaced sound content that is somewhat banal/mindless/crude - I only watched about 10 seconds of it...]

So where should the value be for companies trying to use social media web sites?  This has not changed for most companies – the message for customers/clients should still be something like:

• we care about you and our products/services (we are passionate about them) and
• tells us how can we further assist you with our product/service or
• provide other useful feedback that will help us to improve our products & services.

So what about the larger, public social media sites – should companies be there as well?

• How diluted do you want your message to be?
• How well can you manage multiple on-line presences?
• (How) Can your company benefit from the large social media sites?
• Is the company comfortable being another ‘me too’ brand?
• Will you be ready to migrate (mushroom your coverage) to the next, great Internet marketing medium?
• As a potential client/customer, how likely am I to visit a mega-social-web site to research your products and services? (Who is your market?)
• Instead of joining yet-another social media web site what can you do to your corporate web to bring users to you for the continuing the conversation experience?
• Have you done an analysis of your customer base?  What are the demographics of your client base?  Is a social web approach appropriate?  What are the long term tendencies of your client base?
• Is group think part (or even appropriate for your brand?) of your marketing approach?

While the social media/web trend seems to be a youthful phenomenon it is actually, simply a modern solution (with an almost instantaneous, global reach) to the age old tendency of humans to gather with like-minded folks with their purposes being simply to share;  share information, share fun/joy/experiences, share opinions, share solutions – share passions.   Much of what is located via the larger social webs is useless though perhaps entertaining information – again, no news here for most of us and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this level of information, except, perhaps being associated with it – is there a tangible, positive return from such a presence/association?  The real informational gems on the Internet tend to be smaller, highly focused sites – are you connected to them?  are you one of them?

The basic premise behind the social web is continuing the conversation – sites that provide true exchange of ideas, collaboration, or just plain fun will continue to succeed.  Companies that continue the conversation with their clients/customers (IMO – better to have your own, branded feedback/conversation channel than jumping into the mega-social-web sites) should also prosper.

Related posts:

1. Refresh Savannah: The Social Media Food Chain Refresh Savannah – NG – nerd gathering and a bit...
2. Wordpress – importing images (media) I have not found a simple way to batch import ...
3. ct manifesto @ 10 2009 – Several interesting points (with my brief comments in...
4. Professional Blogging – resources If this is not a blogging site then why are...
5. Refresh Savannah: SEO 101 The second meeting of Refresh Savannah was held tonight at...