Communications consultants selling social media strategy are taking advantage of business leaders suffering from shiny penny syndrome. (Image credit: Solofriendly.com)
Social media is a not a strategy. It is not a department. It is not a communications discipline. And it is not a type of agency…or at least it shouldn’t be.
I don’t know how many times we have to address this topic. I feel like we have the “social media is just a technology that facilitates communication” conversation every day. But obviously the message has not sunk in for everyone yet. Because I continue to see communicators marketing themselves as social media experts or social media department leaders. And every time I turn around, there is a handful of new social media agencies who have put their names in the “take advantage of the shiny penny” ring.
Here’s the deal. Companies need a communications strategy. An integrated marketing communications strategy.
Today’s customers don’t care about a company’s silos or departments or what technology its employees use. They care about brand perception, accessibility and touchpoints. That’s what makes or breaks how they feel and, more importantly, what they say about an organization. And that perception comes from a variety of consumer touchpoints across ALL marketing communications segments (e.g. marketing, PR, advertising, branding). And NOT ALL of those touchpoints involve or come from social media.
In the past, I haven’t gotten all riled up about the social media expert conversations or arguments on how we talk about social media. I simply figured it was an issue of semantics. A reflection of the way people talked about a topic they didn’t completely understand and about which they were still learning.
But I no longer believe that. Because the people who are presenting themselves as social media experts, the people who say they run social media agencies and build social media strategies, should know better. And so I’m left to believe they are only doing one thing by embracing this misleading positioning — attempting to take advantage of business leaders who don’t know the difference. And to be honest, the thought makes me sick to my stomach.
As I’ve said before, social media is a technology that facilitates targeted communications and relationship building. It’s a tool that might make a lot of sense as part of a larger overall approach to help a company reach it’s business goals and objectives. But social media alone is not strategic. And anyone who says otherwise is more concerned with their own bottom line than their clients’.
A strategic communications approach takes into account, among other things, the following:
- What does a brand want its customers to do?
- How can we best reach the target audience?
- What will help us achieve the company’s business and communications goals and objectives?
- How will our communications efforts influence brand perception?
Social media may very well be a communications tactic we pull out of the toolbox to help answer the above questions. But it won’t be the only tool. In fact, in the best integrated approaches, we’ll have to make social media work together with a lot of other tools for the brand to be accessible to the customer at all his/her touchpoints, therefore creating the desired perception and customer actions.
For example:
- All components of the marketing communications team, led by branding, might play a part in developing a new brand campaign.
- Then advertising might create TV, radio, print or online ads to share the new brand messaging.
- PR might manage the traditional media and blogger relations outreach to share the new brand messaging and start the conversation about what it means to consumers.
- Marketing might manage customer engagement on Facebook and Twitter, as well as optimize for SEO/SEM keywords around the new campaign.
- And all communications departments might work together to create and share content across platforms (e.g. e-mail, website, YouTube, etc.) that tells the new brand story.
As communicators, we’re fighting an uphill battle. Our work is historically hard to tie to every company’s lifeblood — sales. And we are still dealing with the longstanding stereotype of being spinsters, which makes it that much harder to earn the trust of leaders who make the tough business and budget decisions.
What these leaders need us to be is trusted strategic counselors. But when we position ourselves solely as social media superstars, we belittle the strategy we can bring to the table and we cheapen that trusted relationship we should be trying to build.
“Doing” social media is easy. Anyone can create a Facebook page, brand a YouTube channel or engage on Twitter. Integrated marketing communications is hard. It requires stepping out of silos and working together across departments. It requires considering every consumer touchpoint and the best way to reach the customer there to achieve goals and objectives. It requires working to change years of company culture.
It requires strategy. An integrated communications strategy. And my friends, I am one of the biggest proponents of social media you will find anywhere. But that doesn’t change the most important part of this discussion — social media alone IS NOT a strategy.
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