The Savvy CIO

If you lend half an ear to “marketing experts”, “industry analysts” or “social media gurus”, you’ve probably heard your company should be using the social web for marketing, sales, customer support, brand awareness and about anything else you can think of. Now the “social web” can mean a lot of things of varying use, but the two tools that really get a lot of publicity are Twitter and Facebook.

Here’s my advice: Don’t believe the hype.

At least, most businesses shouldn’t.

I’m a technical consultant, so I’m sure I’m missing the marketing brilliance happening here. But the truth is, very few businesses are doing anything with tangible impact with Twitter and Facebook right now.

After watching social media and business with interest for a few years now, here’s my take:

Believe the Hype If…

You are a lifestyle brand. If you sell nice cars or wine you can get value out of social channels. Lifestyle brands are the most common type of business with some proven success on Facebook and Twitter.

You are a business built with social media in mind. KogiBBQ is a mobile restaurant, in the tradition of California Taco Trucks. By using Twitter to send out their upcoming location, they’ve built something of a cult following. It’s brilliant, but of limited use to anyone not running a moving business.

Your business is being a social media “expert”. There are almost 16,000 “social media gurus” on Twitter, many of whom are looking to make a buck by telling you how to use it.

Six months ago I attended a Social Media Seminar. All of the presenters had successfully used social media to build businesses based on telling other people that they should use social media. Very helpful…

Your business makes people angry. Comcast got on Twitter to put our their customer service fires. United should have paid attention after their Twitter PR disaster.

Don’t Believe the Hype if…

Your company doesn’t fit any of the above four categories, especially if you sell business to business.

I’ve tried and tried to find examples of business-to-business companies making a real impact with Facebook and Twitter. They can be nice complementary communication channels (with extremely vague ROIs), but there’s nothing of substance I can find.

I’m not naïve. Social media is here to stay, and as those raised on social media grow up to lead businesses, it’s influence will only increase. So don’t ignore social media.

But next time some “guru” makes you feel antiquated because you’re not being a “rockstar” on Twitter or on Facebook Pages, don’t buy the hype.

Think I’m missing the point, or have you also struggled to find the impact for your company? What’s your experience with Twitter and Facebook for business?

This entry was posted on Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Strategy & Consulting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.