Forget About Conflicting Reports and Studies, Social Media Marketing Is Here To Stay

Lately, there have been numerous reports and studies about the state of social media. On one end, you have studies that claim that social media is highly useable and widely accepted in the corporate, retail, and entertainment industries. On the other end of the spectrum, you get reports stating that social media is a fad and offers little to no advantage in advancing business.

Read one article and see that over 99% of online retailers have or will have a Facebook Page for their business. Turn the page and read another claiming top executives do not believe social media marketing can generate business leads. Click another link and see a study stating social media has little to no effect on brand perception. Follow a link ReTweeted by a connection on Twitter and find that social media offers deep brand engagement resulting in better financial performance.

Despite these conflicting reports, I’m here to offer an easy to understand summary of why social media marketing is here to stay.

Social Media Marketing has a high adoption rate in many industries because of its inherent ease of entry. With the popularity of social media in the news, it’s easy to find competing brands or industries utilizing social media. A brand manager, executive, or athlete can start self marketing via Facebook and Twitter within minutes. Social Media Marketing is a low cost and low resource marketing medium – qualities any brand, regardless of industry, should find enticing. The barrier to enter this realm is low and therefore adoption is quick, easy, and painless.

With low costs and minimal resources invested, brands can “play around” with Social Media Marketing – and often do. While there are thousands of brands and personalities marketing on the social media platforms, the wide majority of marketers are simply experimenting. This creates a type of class structure – companies who truly “get” social media make up the upper class while companies struggling to grasp the benefits of this form of marketing create the lower and middle classes. A prime example of this can be found in the airline industry. JetBlue and Southwest Airlines are among the upper class of , leaving other airlines, even big names like AA, Continental, and Delta, struggling to catch up.

Brands will undoubtedly want to get into the upper class and will therefore use more resources to become social media experts. This sort of competition is great for the overall industry of social media marketing. As brands spend more to strengthen their social marketing campaigns, an entire industry devoted to this new form of marketing is created. Social Media Marketers and Social Media Consultants will help these “lower and middle class” (in terms of social media only) transform their social media efforts and become members of the prestigious social media upper class. Of course, this will require resources (money) and will therefore make brands more invested in their social media efforts – further strengthening social media for the long run.

With custom crafted social marketing plans running, brands will start to see the full potential of social media marketing. All it takes is a steady increase in fans or followers to generate excitement amongst decision makers. After a month of steady fan increases, I showed a client their fan count numbers – instant social media believer. Seeing this hard evidence that their social media efforts were at least resulting in more eyes viewing their brand showed the potential of the campaign we had designed together. There are tons of little things to track – fan count, interactions, comments, links, pingbacks, RTs – all of which increase momentum for the overall marketing campaign. These small wins increase the decision makers’ sentiment about social media marketing, further securing social media for the long run.

For those who subscribe to the studies that social media holds no value or is simply a fad, I invite you to bookmark this post. Come back in a year, two years, five years – read this again and see if this is still a relevant discussion or a blast from the past.

Share This