Before everyone starts shouting at me, hear me out! Since the advent of social media, getting your brand out there has never been easier. Well that’s great I hear you say and I completely agree, in the right hands it is brilliant. However the bit I find concerning is that everyone is now a ‘Marketing Expert’ just because they have a couple of social media accounts.
Simply posting the odd bit to your company page now and then does not make you marketer. Yet, in smaller organisations there seems to have been a move away from employing a specialist marketer to tacking ‘looking after social media’ on to another position.
Good marketing is an art form! Being both analytical and creative are essential. A successful marketer needs to have an understanding of the fundamentals of business and what influences buyer. To reduce this all down to an add-on to someone’s role undermines the importance of marketing.
Social media is not the ‘be all and end all’ of marketing. It is a facet of marketing and yes it’s a good one, especially for limited budgets. However it shouldn’t replace or ‘kill off’ other forms of marketing.
Using social media as a marketing tool is the same as any other. It needs to be considered. There needs to be a structure to your approach. You need to have a strategy and an understanding your audience demographic rather than jumping in with a gung ho approach. If you can couple it with other digital or traditional forms of Marketing so much the better.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti social media. Used as part of a strategy, it is a great tool. It has revolutionised the way in which companies interact with clients. It has created a much more collaborative approach involving the client from a much earlier stage. Additionally, it places a higher importance on relationship development than ever before.
So, instead of killing off marketing, effective social media is simply causing it to evolve which can only be seen as a positive.