#DearKen I’m under increasing pressure to show results from my team’s social media efforts. Does my company need a social media rock star?
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Thank you for your question. Yes, your company must must must have a social media rock star. The twist? It’s you!
My usual disclaimer before we start. All opinions expressed here are my own, and come from my experience running social marketing campaigns, managing social marketing teams, and advising social marketing clients. Your mileage will vary.
Rock star. Guru. Ninja. Maven. Back in spring 2007, at the film, interactive media, music, and converged communications festival known as SXSW, social media got shot out of the proverbial cannon as the “next big thing.” Pre-Ashton. Pre-Oprah. Pre-Gaga. SXSW 2007 was arguably *the* tipping point for all things social, kicking off the wave of Twitter marketing, Facebook marketing, LinkedIn marketing, SlideShare marketing, Quora marketing… Okay, you get the idea.
Four years later, most of us marketers have [either enthusiastically or grudgingly] added “social” to our media tool belts, alongside owned, earned, and paid media.
Why? Because social media empowers the people who use it. For the first time ever, anyone, anytime, anywhere can say, and then effectively publish whatever they want.
Combine social media with the power of mobile, and people can literally communicate at the point of inspiration, reporting and commenting on developments (such as natural disasters) as they happen. And, in the case of the ongoing revolutions in the Middle East, people can wield social media to criticize politicians, organize protests and change history. No wonder a man in Egypt named his newborn daughter “Facebook” in honor of the role social media played in bringing about the revolution.
As marketers, we know that social media doesn’t just give our customers, consumers, and users a voice. It also significantly increases their reach and social influence, instantly amplifying what they have to say – even if their message is not always brand-friendly (or even correct). This makes all of us just one bad customer experience away from our own United Breaks Guitars (yes, I am writing this on an airplane).
To complicate matters, social media presents all of us with an increasingly steep learning curve. Unlike the other forms of media we use daily, none of us has yet had the luxury of years of formal education and/or professional experience to hone our social media skills. In addition to our individual and collective lack of experience with social media, there is also increasing pressure on all of us to increase our overall marketing ROIs.
Staying current is tough for everyone. Every time I go online, there is yet another “new thing” for me to understand, master, and then integrate into my overall strategy. It’s no wonder so many of us seek outside help.
At SocialGrow, I was “that social media guy”. Fortune 500 and startup companies asked me to do everything from “teach our people how to tweet” to “help us completely rethink the way we ‘do’ marketing by transitioning our business away from its reliance on one-way print and broadcast paid media to truly interactive ‘free’ social media.” Wow.
Wow is right. I found myself repeatedly telling prospective clients that the single worst marketing decision they could make was to hire me to do all of their social media marketing (and yes, the line did get me a lot of clients).
Why? Because social media is not about tools, technologies, and practices, it’s about learning how to quickly identify, appropriately test, and successfully integrate new ideas into your marketing. YOU, your marketing team, and your company need to have the first-hand experience that can only come from doing your *own* social media marketing.
Put simply, YOU need to be your company’s social media rock star, full stop.
Yes, you can still accelerate your efforts with outside help. Just remember to use professionals who actually know the art and science of marketing. A quick rule of thumb: good “experts” will deliver the results you want by doing the work for you. Great experts will teach you and your team everything they know. But the best experts will teach you how to continually identify, analyze, and test these new marketing tools, technologies, and practices so you that truly are the social media rock star your company needs you to be to outperform your industry.
What do YOU think? Can your business create a sustainable competitive advantage by “renting” expert social media talent? Or is it more effective to “in-source” this social media expertise by ensuring YOU have the ability to learn and leverage social media, taking full advantage of all the new social media developments in line with your brand’s strategy? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.
Editor’s note: Do YOU have a question about social marketing technologies, tools, and best practices? Tweet your question with the hashtag “#DearKen”. All tweets will be acknowledged, and considered as being submitted for publication.