Social Marketing is Like Showing Up Naked to a Cocktail Party

Everyone is buzzing about social marketing.  Social marketing used to be known as “word of mouth marketing” 25 years ago.  Thanks to advances in communications driven in large part by the Internet, “word of mouth marketing” is now known as social marketing which may or may not be a great tool to promote your business.

Social Marketing is all about transparency.

Launching a social marketing campaign is like showing up naked to a cocktail party. Launching such a campaign means you’re going to be center of attention so you’d better have nothing to hide! If you haven’t been hitting the gym, EVERYONE is going to know as soon as you enter the room. Oh, and if you’re a pre-op transvestite… well THAT fact is going to be obvious as well.

In other words, it's hard to hide the truth about your business on the web these days.

MySpace, Facebook and other social networking sites have improved not only people’s ability to connect with others but have also increased everyone’s ability to share recommendations within their own social network or through posting comments on review websites.  In a nutshell, Web 2.0 has increased the power of the consumer and word of mouth marketing exponentially.  

Social Marketing is a great marketing strategy for the business with supremely satisfied customers or clients.

If your business goal is to delight your customer and exceed his/her expectation, then you’re going to LOVE what social marketing does for your business.

Social Marketing is a great marketing strategy for the business that tightly targets a specific niche market.

If your business is tightly targeting a specific customer, then social marketing is a natural extension of your current targeting efforts. Tightly targeting your niche market makes it easy for you to focus your social marketing efforts on specific social networking sites which are gathering places for your target audience.

Social Marketing is nothing new!

It’s important to recognize that these social networking conversations have been going on since people began communicating with each other. Ancient cavemen would surely gather around the fire and talk about how a spear made from the wood of this tree brought down a Mastodon with a single throw.  Meanwhile, Grog saw a hunter from another tribe was using a spear made from the wood from another type of tree and he watched that other hunter end up as Mastodon toe jam.  

Today, Networking Joe is posting bulletins on Myspace telling his friends and family members about the great cruise he took last week or posting videos he took on the cruise to YouTube.

When it comes to social marketing, you have very little control over what people are saying about your business.

It’s important to keep in mind that these people who are talking about your business are NOT on your payroll, so you need to be prepared for them to add their own “spin” to your marketing message.  You must also be prepared for the fact that people, in general, tend to be more willing to talk about your business when your business hasn’t performed up to their expectations.

Think of the game of “telephone” you may have played as a child in school.  The first person in the chain would whisper a phrase into the second person’s ear.  That person would then repeat the phrase to the third person in the chain.  This process would continue until the final person in the chain would repeat out loud the version of the original message.  Most times the final version was dramatically different than the original message whispered from the first to second person.  

This is very similar to what can happen to your marketing message within these social networks.  The lesson to be learned from this game is that your marketing message must be crystal clear.  If your message is simple then it’s more likely that your informal network will carry the message accurately.

The difference between the “informal” social conversations of years gone by and the social conversations happening on the web today is this: in the past those conversations were confined to relatively isolated pockets of the population.  The chance of Jane in Rhode Island’s story of customer abuse affecting someone in Los Angeles was pretty slim back in the days before the internet.  Now, if Jane has a video camera and a YouTube account, her message about your business may spread around the world in a matter of hours!

While Caveman Joe only shared his story with his fellow cave dwellers, Social Networking Joe is leaving comments and reviews which will be around for weeks if not for months or even years.

On the other side of the social marketing equation, you have businesses providing products and services who want the attention of the members of the social networks. It’s natural for a business owner to want to monitor the conversations going on about his or her business on the Internet. 

Fortunately, while the Internet has made it easier to people to share information, it's also made it easier for the business owner to track what's being said about his or her business.

No matter what your level of participation in social networking, it makes good business sense for EVERY business owner to set up a Google Alert on his/her business name.  A Google Alert will send an email to you whenever a chosen phrase is indexed by the search engine Google and will let you know when your business is being discussed on the web.  

When a discussion begins about your or your business, it's a great opportunity to join the discussion.  When you stick around and keep contributing to the conversations going on there, that's a great way to begin your social marketing campaign.

One of my early clients was a pioneer in the “pay for content” arena. I was part of the team that launched one of the first paid content/membership sites on the internet back in the mid 1990’s. I was thrilled to be part of blazing such a trail and as such, was full of enthusiastic suggestions for how we could make the company’s membership product “better”.

I’ll never forget the reaction of the company president when I suggested that we add some kind of interactive abilities such as chat or a bulletin board for members. He got a horrified look on his face and announced that the LAST thing in the world his business needed was an opportunity for his customers to get together to compare notes.

If the thought of having all of your customers in a single place comparing notes makes your skin crawl, run as fast as you can from the social marketing scene. Web 2.0 is creating more and more opportunities for customers to compare notes.  This is good news for many small businesses and very, very bad news for businesses for which customer service is an after thought.

Transparency is an integral part of social marketing.  Be prepared for discussions about your paunch and be ready to admit that while your gym membership is several years old, the staff still doesn’t recognize you when you come in to work out.  Set up a Google Alert so you’ll be able to join those conversations when they occur online.