Comments on: Marketing: Social media's hidden bubble

Dozens of opportunistic consultants have spent the past few years shopping their skills in "social media consulting." Now, with a recession tightening up the industry, it's reached a saturation point.

[peter_kim]

Great attention-grabbing title and lede, but then it's difficult to tell whether you think social media marketing campaigns will fail or the people who create them will fail. You seem to indicate that the answer is both.

Lots of potential in the idea here, would love to see you go deeper with it in the future.

[Markus644]

It's like Mitch Joel said: look at what your 'social media expert' has done over the last 6-12 months. Proven results? Great. Blather & hype? Keep looking.

When social media works, it works wonders: look at Fiskars, Mentos or Blendtec. It's simply that there's too many poseurs taking advantage of people's ignorance, and leaving a bad taste in their mouth when they don't produce results.

There may be a bubble effect, but social media is no more likely to fade away than the web itself, which was also a "bubble" at one time.

The paradox of social media marketing is that the minute too much marketing occurs on a platform, the users tend to shy away and migrate toward the next new/unsullied thing. See the evolution of social networking from Classmates to Friendster to MySpace to Facebook. Mee thinks Twitter will suffer the same fate if they ever do employ that much-needed (from a financial perspective at least) business plan of allowing paying corporations to send out their message one tweet at a time.

Advertising Age had a great post about it a few months back. Twitter, R.I.P.? Or Is There Gold Buried in Them Thar Tweets? -- http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=131993

The problem for social media consultants is the very thing that makes social media so interesting and effective - the do-it-yourself ethos that drives the need for direct communication and interaction. Problem is that this same transparency lends itself to a learn-it-yourself environment and that is what is happening. After a couple of years many organizations have mastered the simple tools and now have some experience with what works, what doesn't, and how to experiment to figure it all out. In other words, the democratic nature of the supporting technologies and processes is having its desired effect. This is bad news for "consultants" but good news for the rest of us.

[capernicous2]

This country needs to get back to creating and manufacturing new technologies (like those created during the space race), such as to clean drinking water, new clean engergy, rebuild the grid, etc. That is the only way out of this recession. Social (make believe)/ retail economy is a failure, we cant go on using credit to buy things, holding meetings where nothing is really accomplished and doing each others laundry.

[Markus644]

I know. Only when we're back to making farm tractors and underwear will our economy truly rebound. Imaginary, fluffy stuff like communication will lead nowhere.

[cristi_popa]

Basicaly social media is just another media. Having a twitter account doesn't make you an expert on social media as owning a Tv does not make you an audio-visual expert. As for the market research ypu can read "Using Twitter in qualitative research" on http://yellowsubmarinequal.wordpress.com/

[richard_adams]

It's a touch unkind in a deep recession to seem so happy about any bubble bursting. I also think you are a bit confused about the nature of social media and as a result you are concentrating on applications rather than what social media actually is i.e. media that enables social behaviour.

[alisamleo]

well put richard, this is exactly what i was thinking. yes, those "social media strategists" and "experts" who Twitter and love the word "widget" are a dime a dozen....they also focus entirely on the wrong thing (and so does most of the media)...which is to say "social media" is not a technology or a "space" or a "there"...and to say its "media" is kind of a misnomer as well.

Social media, rather, is merely evidence of the rapidly changing models of behavior, consumption, communication, power, work and entertainment. It is understanding social media in terms of the underlying macro-trends and applying them to new models that is the ultimate task of "experts." That my own title contains "social media" in it has always been much to my chagrin and I have long touted that this unfortunate epithet has a shelf-life. I am not interested in widgets and shiney gadgets....I am interested in behaviors, trends and new models of business that will result from the undeniable shifts that of occurred.

And finally, as the Web is iterative and will continue to shift...what we know as a digital experience today will be very different in the (near) future, particularly with data portability coming to the forefront of social computing...the real social media "experts" in my opinion? The champions of VRM...

[Harrison912]

Thanks, Caroline. Like all things simple, there are those who want to make it complicated and charge a bunch to learn about it.

I've been on FaceBook as well as other social sites for about a year socially marketing my safety and security web site and raising awareness for its products. It's not brain surgery.

Someone within a company with some social and computer skills can figure it out and there's lots of sites on the internet that teach it for little or no money. Forty thousand dollars is crazy!

[shivbirsingh]

Interesting perspective. I think the social space is about to explode even more. However organizations that think of social as something distinct from every other marketing effort are missing the point. It needs to be deeply integrated with every other marketing campaign and activity. The companies that realize that are the ones that have the most success. Its not about social media consultants. At Razorfish we focus on social influence marketing which is centered on marketing to the network of peers that influence purchasing decisions and brand affinity too. The fact that it often happens on a social component is just one part of the picture.

[richard_adams]

Is your social media marketing as poor and as shameless as this transparent and unneeded plug? I wouldn't employ you guys if this is how you market yourselves...lol

[shivbirsingh]

Richard, I'm not sure why you think that. Is it because I mentioned my company name? I do genuinely believe that social has to be looked at in the context of other marketing activities and not isolated from them. I also think there's more to this than just using the social media channels but rather focusing on influence.

[DarcyBev]

Companies need to establish a strategy for social networking that will help them determine what audience they want to engage with and how they can create value. Then the organization needs to work together to create the value by collecting customer feedback, empowering employees, integrating the internal silos, understanding and communicating the customer's needs, and creating metrics to track success. The problem is not the technology and understanding how it works. The problem is having a good strategy ,being able to deliver on the strategy, and being sure that you are providing value by asking questions and being transparent.

[RonMcFarland]

Maybe there are a lot misses with Social Media but the upside is enables direct conversation and there are lot of people talking today.

Also, seems that when traditional advertising tries to just pluggin in as another channel, they are the odd person on the street.

New times and learning and trying is the operative mode.

[AnneEasterling]

It seems to me that all of the hoopla about "social media" is mostly an effort to understand a new tool. This shake-out time is no different than what any new media has gone through, probably even starting with the printing press. What makes social media different is the authenticity it demands. And that's why I like it.

[WeCanDoBIZ]

An amusing article. I agree with the sentiment. Even now I read blogs on respected websites giving advise on how to make the most of social networking without any consideration for whether a company's market is even actually present on those social networks, let alone whether the effort helps achieve high level marketing goals.

I fear that social media experts are the new SEO experts, who, in turn, were the new snake oil salesmen...

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

[Bill Cammack]

hmm... That's interesting that Facebook has a "privacy policy" against informing people when someone deletes someone else. I suppose their point is that you can technically opt-out of the other announcements Facebook likes to make, such as when you break up with a gf/bf or when you buy a movie ticket or a book on some service that has NOTHING to do with Facebook.

I wonder if you can opt out of Facebook's targeted advertising?

[cianw]

scarily like this article

http://www.techchuff.com/media/snake-oil-retailer-advocates-social-media

"Clarke Stanley, the ?Rattlesnake King?, today conducted a fascinating interview on the huge success he has had promoting his online Snake Oil business via Social Media advertising and a whole bunch of stuff his crooked digital agency sold him he didn?t understand."