Social Media Myths That Irk Me

April 21st, 2009 by Nick Gonzalez

mythMaybe it’s the recession, or maybe it’s because we ran out of coffee cups this morning, but I feel like it’s the right time to talk about the misconceptions about social media that really bug me. I hear it from agencies and I hear it from experts. Frankly I think we’re all just making this too hard on ourselves.

Social media is media that is created, modified, or distributed by its audience. The media can vary by how deeply it is social, but at the core, that’s what all of these social networks, photo sites, and blogs are doing. We don’t need a hundred different analogies about how “social media is like” this or that.

1 Social media isn’t media.

- This is the most common one and tied to myth 4 below. The idea is that “social media” shouldn’t be viewed as media because it’s can’t be bought and sold. Social media fits the definition of media by being a communication medium.

Although quibbling over the definition is a tab bit pedantic, it’s important that agencies understand you can buy meaningful advertising within social media as you can within other forms of media. It’s a evolution in FORMAT, not a revolution in advertising.

2 Social media is one product.

Too often I hear about agencies needing to “buy social media” and that consultants are “selling social media”. The fact is that there is often too much diversity how people use social media to talk about it as one entity.

First of all, a lot of the social media consultation going on is aimed at individual brand building and small businesses. These groups are turning to social media to give them greater voice for less money that they’d otherwise achieve.

Brands and agencies have very different needs that aren’t served by top ten tips for blogging. They need products that deliver reproducible and scalable results.

3 Social media buys need to be done apart from traditional digital buys.

This is a common belief debunked by some of the best campaigns out there. Traditional and social media buys can work together. Pepsi’s “Refresh Everything” campaign consisted of traditional display and video spots, but leveraged social media through their “Dear Mr. President” campaign to increase the depth and emotive impact of the campaign.

4 Social media is an uncontrolled conversation.

This is perhaps the biggest one. Brands worry that launching a campaign using social media tools will let the conversation out of their hands. Brands can control conversations simply by controlling the “gestures” participants can make. A more tightly controlled campaign would include only a few positive or neutral gestures users could make with a brand. Looser campaigns would solicit feedback, but filter the content they decide to promote.

5 Social media doesn’t have an ROI.

The ROI question comes up again and again. The difficulty is that the return varies so much across client needs. Comcast can measure their return by measuring customer satisfaction. Pepsi can measure it by looking at purchase intent.

At the end of the day it all just boils down to price. Does a social media campaign deliver the result at a lower price then comparable methods. Often times it does because you simply can’t accomplish what you want by any other means. Social media allowed Frank Eliason to engage with a large consumer audience in pro-active customer support impossible through other customer contact methods. Socialized ads allow brands to persuade consumers though endorsements from friends and communities. You can’t do this through standard broadcast media advertising.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 at 11:58 am and is filed under Uncategorized. 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.

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