Thoughts From Within The Circle…

More and more brands are venturing into social media. And that’s terrific, it really is. A bold leap forward, I’d say. But in speaking with marketers, I’ve come to suspect that a lot of them don’t really understand what that entails. The problem, of course, is that they think they do. Not surprisingly, their ideas surrounding social media and marketing all tend to gravitate to a similar loose concept: some vague amalgamation of Facebook fans, Twitter followers and YouTube viewers, the acquisition of which will somehow generate more sales and brand awareness while simultaneously hacking away at production and media costs. Voila, just like magic!

Inevitably the question that we advertisers must ask, and the one that many brands can’t seem to wrap their heads around, is a simple one: why would someone want to follow your brand/product? It’s a question that begs for an answer but usually — and this is a good thing — only leads to more questions.

Unless you’re a lifestyle brand that hordes of people already identify with, one that carries a fair amount of cultural currency — Nike, Apple, Coke, for example — you have some hard thinking to do. What makes your brand or your products so unique and appealing, what exactly are you offering, that a consumer would be willing to include it/them in the already massively cramped funnel of status updates, emails, tweets and other information that consumes so much of their daily lives? It’s not an easy question to resolve and every brand thinking of entering the social sphere needs to take long, honest look in the mirror before they answer it.

I’m always shocked at the number of marketing people — smart, rational, professional people — who think that setting up a Facebook and Twitter account is enough, that there is no genuine comprehensive social strategy necessary for success, that if you build it the consumer will come (and follow) and the money will start to pour in. But simply showing up is not enough.

The reality is that social media marketing is a long-term commitment that takes persistence and tenacity. There is no magic bullet. Success requires a detailed, well-researched, creatively engineered strategy that is specifically tailored to meet an individual brand’s needs. Are you building brand recognition and awareness? Driving sales? Finding new customers? There is a lot of chatter and noise to sift through and it takes constant monitoring and enthusiastic participation on the part of the brand to locate the kinds of people with whom they might want to engage. Think of social media as a giant party where thousands of different conversations are occurring simultaneously. How do you find the right conversations? And once you do find them, how will you choose to participate? What will you contribute? How will you measure the results of those interactions?

Consumers want something interesting to talk about, to discuss and argue over. They want something they can pass along to their friends and family; something they can blog, tweet, and mash up. If you want passive consumers to become active brand advocates you have to engage and offer them a genuine incentive to participate. You need killer content. A great product or service is a wonderful start, but it’s never enough. For the vast majority of brands looking to harness the power of social media and word-of-mouth marketing there is a lot of hard work ahead.

Remember it’s a party. Distractions abound; there’s lots to see, hear and do. You don’t need to be the life of the party dominating the discussion and drawing all the ears and eyeballs towards you. But you better find your niche, your crowd, your corner where you can huddle together and engage in conversations. And when you do, you better have something worthwhile to add. You need to know what they’re reading, watching and sharing so you can become a trusted source of information by providing content that is timely and relevant to their interests. You need to make them feel invested in your brand. You need to make it about them. Unfortunately, most brands get this wrong.

Make no mistake, social media provides brands with a great set of marketing tools. But they’re just that — a set of tools to be used in service of a brand. They’re not ends to themselves. Using them effectively requires smart, strategic thinking and trained expertise. But that is just the beginning. As more companies begin to understand and implement social initiatives, what will differentiate one brand from another? It’s those companies that provide the most engaging and useful content, the ones that tell the best stories that will gain a competitive edge and thrive in the social realm.