The biggest mistake a
marketer can make in Social Media is failing to recognise that Social Media is
fundamentally different from everything that has gone before in digital
marketing. It is not ‘the same, only more so’, it is a step in a new direction.
Maybe the best way to
avoid Social Media disasters is to administer a small electric shock to anyone
who uses the phrase “one-to-one” in the same sentence as Social Media. Because it is not a “one-to-one” medium, and
to apply the same tactics and metrics which apply to the direct-response model
of digital marketing is to invite failure.
In fact, Social Media
may mark the end of “one-to-one” marketing. An increasing number of people choose
to conduct an increasing amount of their online interactions through the
‘Social Lens’. This means that there are large numbers of potential customers
your brand will never get to speak to alone. You’ll always and only find them
in them in a social setting, and you’ll have to be comfortable there in order
to engage.
Social Media upends the
notion of how campaigns are deployed and measured. For the school of digital
marketing evolved from direct-response DNA, a campaign is like a pick-up line. You
try it out on a number of customers and achieve a certain rate of success. To
extend the analogy to Social Media, imagine approaching someone you’d like to
impress at a pleasant gathering of mutual friends and loudly asking: “wanna go
back to my place?” It would go over like a… Social Media disaster.
