Relevant Chews

Myspace, Facebook and Twitter… oh my!

Is anyone else tired of talking about this Marketing Land of Oz? Social Media is communication phenomenon, but it’s not the yellow brick road to success and clicking three times will not get you home.

Why? Because if you need a social media strategy to be authentic, maybe you have a brand disorder?

The lofty new authors of “Social Media or Die” are not talking to the real people that are on these channels. If they stopped to have this conversation, they would discover a growing discontent for advertising on Facebook. The low entry cost and viral potential makes it attractive to marketers, but consider what your profile would look like if every brand in the world was marketing on social media… a big, noisy NASCAR page.

How marketing showed up and ruined the social media party…

Of course there are case studies and success stories out there, but the percentage of replicable success is low. The bell curve (something we all learned in grade school) remains true, and the early adopters that failed quickly and refined their strategy are winning. Unfortunately, a big wave of newbies is coming. This will over-saturate the medium and leave a mess in the wake.

What if the best social media channel for marketing is yet to come?

I’m not discouraging social media marketing, but a simpler theory is you don’t need a strategy to be on social media—just be real, build a healthy presence, and have a relevant and compelling word of mouth message. Your fans will do the rest.

If you’re out there already, then keep playing.  Trying to catch up on strategy is about as effective as worrying about the next thing. What will you do then?