Last week I attended a great 2-day conference sponsored by New Marketing Labs (aka Chris Brogan and Justin Levy). It's my second social media conference in as many weeks and again, I'm completely surprised at how few Marketing and PR people were in attendance. What's up with this??
I truly believe we are in the midst of a communication revolution. What is marketing about, anyway, if not communication? It boggles my mind that so few marketing professionals were there – and I'm talking about the big dogs in particular. It's a dangerous position they're putting themselves in for a couple of reasons.
- It's a difficult economy. Businesses, in general, are hunkering down. I've read it over and over that one of the worst things you can do in an economic downturn is stop planning for the future. Whether it's R&D, product development, strategic planning – tomorrow WILL get here eventually and the business environment will improve. If you've put your mind & business in moth balls you're going to be left behind when that happens.
- One of the hardest things for us to do, as humans, is to change our perspective – to change our paradigms . That is what social media demands of traditional business models.
Social media is new; difficult to measure by traditional standards; requires one to use (simple, yet) new technologies and was initially adopted by 'kids' for 'kids' to chat and share music/photo/videos. Putting on blinders and discounting the new because "that's not the way we do it" is deadly.
Social media is about communication, yes, but it's the WAY of social media that seems contradictory to "the way they've always don it" before and, therefore, difficult to embrace. Social media is about transparency, about sharing and opening up, providing real value to our customers for… FREE without a direct, immediate payback. This doesn’t come naturally – nor change easily – in traditional business environments. Old school top-down management runs contrary to successful social media strategies, which is a true Bottom-up / Grass-roots style.
To be successful businesses must be willing to give up control and take some risks that, to your traditional mindset, seem awfully scary.
What hasn’t changed, however, is the fact that communications, marketing and PR are still – communications, marketing and PR. Some of the basics are still critical to success:
- Objective
- Strategy
- Plan
- Execution
- Measure
- Revise / Relaunch
- Measure
- And so on.
Short-term social media campaigns can be successful, but are generally supported by a long-term social media strategy.
It’s still about the basics – seen from a new perspective. You have to be BOLD.
