Social Media is for Conversation, Not a Bulletin Board

For many people social media feels like another “todo”, is treated like another marketing channel, and is about as effective as newspaper advertising in 2010.

Why? Because they treat it like a “todo”, and use it like bulletin board.

Social networks and (although I hate the term) web 2.0 is about 2 way communication. It’s about conversations. We’ve had decades of ‘here is what WE want you to see’ advertising. The reason why most of those forms of advertising don’t work as well as they used to is because we’ve had enough! The reason why we TIVO, and skip the commercials and are scared to answer our home phone in the evenings (if we even have one anymore) is because we’ve had enough. We’ve had enough of companies BS’ing us with how great they are. Enough of the manipulation of sex, babes and rock-n-roll to satisfy psychographic recommendations.

“Are you generation Y or X?

Stand by for the appropriate sales pitch for you.”

For too long since the industrial revolution we have had no voice. We have been put into a box with a label and talked to, shouted to and treated like a mass entity. We have watched what we were given on TV, listened to what was aired on the radio, seen what was paid to be be posted on the billboards, in magazines, and in newspapers.

The sales went to those with the biggest mouths (read: pockets) with the broadest reach (read: deeper pockets).

We no longer heard the stories of the merchants at the street market. We no longer got to know the druggist, or the local general store owner. And no one really cared what we had to say, and we didn’t have a big enough megaphone (or deep enough pockets) to get our message out there.

When the internet came along, it gave us a voice. But, for many that voice didn’t fully exist as it does today. Many were unaware of it, or didn’t know how to effectively find or use much of it.

Businesses scampered onboard to build websites, and people went to them. Businesses suddenly had new “bulletin boards” to pin their info to. They had websites and email. The holy grail became email addresses and lists and everyone jumped for joy that they could now exercise post their sales pitches in a whole new way. Rejoice!

But like TV, the phone, the newspaper, people became tired of that as well. So much so that we needed the CAN SPAM act to go along with the DO NOT CALL list.

Now enter Social Media, and social networks. Although many have been using message boards and listservs, etc for over a decade, the accessibility and popularity of social networks, and the multitude of other easy and free ways to post content such as blogging has created a voice for everyone.

Rejoice! Now we have a voice. We have a voice that can tell manufacturers and product and service providers and business owners what we want. We can tell them what we want and love and what we hate. For those companies and independent business owners, artists, authors and others who engage in this conversation, this is a big reason to rejoice. This is the best thing since sliced bread!

Sadly, others are sitting around lamenting that it either doesn’t work, or haven’t even discovered whether it would because they are still analyzing the value.

Whether something works depends on two things: what result you are looking for, and how you work it.

If you are trying to use social media like a bulletin board, or a billboard, it won’t work. It’s like putting gasoline in a diesel engine. No matter which way you pour or what kind you use, the results won’t be what you want them to be.

If you abdicate the task to someone else, it won’t work the same way either. If you are a small business owner or service provider and you have someone else engaging your customers, how will they feel when you show up? If they called you because they like the person they have been talking to online, you better hope that they knew it wasn’t you! Otherwise it’s like one of those movies where the socially inept guy has a buddy talk to and write to the cute girl and then when the time comes to meet face to face…

I am not saying that only the CEO can tweet for the company, and I’m not saying that there isn’t information that simply needs to be posted to make people aware (like events, recalls, etc). What I am saying is that without engaging, without conversation, you might as well use the tools that were designed for that purpose. A radio host doesn’t use a two-way radio. It’s the wrong tool.

Marketing isn’t a bad word. Neither is selling! We all want and need things. Whether you are selling widgets, or your kids on why they should clean their room, selling is a vital part of our existence.

Marketing isn’t advertising. Marketing is what takes place between the product and the sale. All I am saying is that applying traditional marketing techniques (in the form of advertising) in the social media space, doesn’t fit. Social Media is for conversation.

Conversations aren’t new. We’ve had them for a long time! We’ve had many tools to facilitate them for a long time. We’ve had CB radios, ham radios, telephones, the telegraph and on and on. We have preferred to do business with people we knew, liked and trusted forever! We just never had the opportunity to know so many. When we couldn’t choose “who we liked”, we looked for the best, cheapest, etc. We looked at those bulletin boards. We chose based on ads, and commercials and one-way communications to us from companies vying for our business, because that’s all we had to go on. Now we can know more about the people, the business, and the people behind the business.

Yes, the world has changed. We have changed. Our choices have changed. Our conversations have changed. What ‘works’ has changed.

Or has it?