Social Media doesn’t work as a silo. Nothing new there. When we talk about this, I think the assumption is from a marketing perspective and its true, Social Media Marketing rarely works unless its integrated with other marketing activity or an ongoing engagement program to fuel the initial awareness. However, the issue is wider than that. Businesses need to integrate all their communications and make sure it translates into the day to day operations for social to truly work and have a financial impact.
Many brands and agencies are pushing campaigns for social media marketing, this post from Forrester Research looked at this last week, rather than using social media to improve the business operations. The ‘snakes on a plane’ anecdote is a great example – the interaction on social channels drove the entire movie and the WOM and interaction was unprecedented- social media marketing win. But ultimately it lead to the movie getting a higher certificate rating which negatively affected sales – social business fail.
Another good example here from NMA highlighting the need to make your operations more ‘social’ before setting up social media channels. Otherwise, all you are doing is creating a lightning fast channel for people to amplify the fact that your core service is sub standard! It’s no use hiring a social media strategist-ninja-guru or having a few dudes or girls engaging with customers on Twitter and uploading ‘cool’ content on your Facebook page every day, if it doesn’t translate to the customer service or user experience.
Social media can be a dynamite marketing tool but businesses need to get their house in order, and by that I mean their website, their SEO, their customer research, their customer service (online and offline) and their systems integration, before using it drive awareness and interactivity through individual ‘campaigns’.
