Don’t believe the social media lies. We tasked Will Green with debunking the tallest tales about social media marketing
Of all the things that have profoundly changed the communications landscape over the last few years, social media is surely the biggest. From all but non-existent in 2005, the social giants – Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube – are now never far away from any marketing discussion. And with new social platforms like Periscope, Vine, Snapchat, and Xaga emerging at a rapid pace, there’s no doubt the importance of social in marketing will only go one way.
The very first social media myth – that B2B marketers need not concern themselves with social, that it is best left to their cousins in B2C – has been so comprehensively debunked there is no reason to waste time refuting it. There are, however, still plenty of myths about social that might be hampering B2B marketers in making the most out of it. We debunk our top five.
1) Social is cheap
Because sign-up to most social media platforms is free, and the cost-per-click of a Facebook or Twitter link compared to a platform like Google Adwords is much lower, there is an enduring myth that social media is cheap. But as Juliet Evanthia Caragianis, head of North American client division at SBC London puts it: “Good social takes time, and time is money. Therefore, good social is not cheap.”
The costs of direct promotion may be cheaper than traditional advertising outlets – though as Jacques de Cock, faculty member at the London School of Marketing points out, this isn’t always the case: “Sometimes TV advertising is now cheaper than Google ads.” But the real cost of social lies in structuring your target audience and researching the most effective methods for reaching them.
Catherine Crawley, head of social media at Ingenuity, puts it bluntly: “Running social media successfully requires time, knowledge and experience, all of which cost money. If a company is not willing to invest in social media, they are at huge risk of damaging the reputation of the business.”
2) Social can be left to the intern
This is based on an idea that seems quite logical: millenials ‘get’ digital and social, so they should be the best placed to make social work. But this notion is wrong-headed, as Alexei Lee, head of social at Fat Media, explains: “There is a misplaced perception that younger people are more active across social and, therefore, intuitively understand what’s involved in using it effectively in a business context.”
The key to effective social media is making all the content and engagement relevant to your brand and customers. This means the person who is best suited to managing social is someone who knows the business inside out and is experienced in managing those conversations. This is unlikely to be an intern of three weeks.
Of course, as Joel Windels, VP EMEA marketing at Brandwatch argues, interns and junior team members can be trained to be brilliant social media managers: “But the best social strategies take input from all sides of the business.” Paul Smith, GM of Salesforce Marketing Cloud EMEA, agrees: “Social should be the responsibility of everyone in the company, from receptionists responding to tweets about parking spaces, to agents in call centres and marketers creating digital campaigns, right up to and including c-level executives.”
3) Measure success with retweets
Because social media allows them to be measured easily, there is still far too much faith in ‘vanity metrics’: retweets, page likes, click-throughs and so on. Rich Wilson, CEO of Relative Insight, a business specialising in online linguistic analytics gives a telling example: “We looked into a financial services social campaign which, on paper, had been a huge success, doubling the number of retweets and shares for a normal campaign. But when we looked at the language surrounding those shares and retweets, it was extremely negative. Essentially, people were sharing the advert as an example of bad marketing.”
For social to be a credible part of the marketing process, it must be related to business growth and contribution to the bottom line. Retweets, clicks and downloads can be part of showing the level of engagement marketers are having with their content, but marketers must view social as part of the overall marketing campaign rather than a separate entity with its own separate metrics.
4) Social can be automated
There are some aspects of automation in social that can be really helpful. Using a tool such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck can allow you to post content at 5am on a Monday morning to appeal to the financial services sector while you are still tucked up in bed. As Simon Douglass, founder of Curated Digital shows, this can be effective: “We have a monthly plan where we scope out how many posts per day go out across the different platforms, giving very granular advice about the type
of content which needs to work on the different platforms.”
But as Tom Berry, CEO, Chameleon points out, you can only rely on automation to a limited extent: “How do you feel when you get a call and it is a recording on the end of the phone? You can automate social, but it isn’t going to give you the best engagement. The best social posts are the ones which feel human, delivered through proper community engagement and real-time reactions to real life events.”
Automation is useful for pushing your content out there, but that’s as far as it goes. With social, the clue is in the name: it needs to be a two-way process of engaging with relevant communities, not simply shouting about your business at all hours of the day.
5) Use every social platform
The golden rule of marketing in the content-focused digital era is: be where your customers are. The internet is awash with abandoned Facebook groups and unused Twitter accounts that are each the sad remnants of bad marketing and planning. Social media – like any other facet of the business – must be relevant to the business itself. As Ashley Carr, founder of Neo PR, argues: “Businesses must assess their requirements, the types of social media channel and the resources available to populate them, in order to choose the right channels. There is little point in having a social media account set up if it isn’t going to be populated with relevant and engaging posts.”
It all comes back to researching your audience, setting your targets and experimenting with what works best. As Sophie Turton, content marketing specialist at Bozboz explains: “There are lots of studies available that can help you determine which platform your target audience interact most on, and you will get far better results if you use these and focus on areas most appropriate to your business.”
Treat social like other channels
There is no doubt that social is here to stay and B2B marketers know this is the case. The next step, one which many are already taking, is to treat social like any other marketing channel, not an extra bonus that can be thought about at the last minute.
This means moving past the myths about social and, instead, seeing it as a golden opportunity to start inspiring new and existing customers with your products, services, content and personality.
Do you agree with our list? What other social myths do you think need debunking? Tweet @marketingb2b with the hashtag #SocialSep
