There are an awful lot of businesses and brands out there doing the whole Social Media thing rather badly.
Getting Marketing Wrong isn’t a new phenomenon, I only have to look at the dross which drops though my letterbox from Indian takeaways, landscape gardeners and cleaning services to see that there are a lot of smaller businesses out there Doing Their Own Marketing who need help (like that dress shop I blogged about before).
But social media is so accessible, affordable and easy to get started with that the entry requirements rule out almost no-one. Which means that the over-confident wade in without a clue of How To Do It.
Take my local horse rug washing company. They have a facebook page which I happily liked. Then the founder (met her once, spoke on the phone twice) sent me a friend request on facebook. She obviously hadn’t twigged the public/semi private differentiation between pages and people.
The fab transcription service I always use seems to see twitter as some kind of occasional use broadcast tool for sales messages and still has an egg as their avatar.
And then there’s the frankly worrying number of marketing agencies (who really should know better) out there with a blog that hasn’t been updated in months – perhaps one of those cobbler’s-children-having-no-shoes situations?
It’s just so easy to set up a twitter account, blog or facebook page that I suspect some of those happily doing so are doing their brands or businesses more harm than good.
understanding the ins and outs of social media marketing seems to hold value across all layers of business. A lot of people I speak to are under the impression that social media benefits only large corporations capable of maintaining thousands of followers and likes on their pages. I agree with what you are saying, in that smaller businesses (especially those focusing on a local audience) stand to gain more than huge established corporations through their social media efforts. A great example of this is the recent explosion of food trucks in Boston and other cities. There are now tons of mobile food tucks serving lunch and dinner to Bostonians on a daily basis, and their primary form of advertising is via Twitter. These small local businesses are finding a tremendous amount of success, which proves that social media marketing is not a privilege reserved for only the largest corporations.
I agree completely! Although I do wonder how far the lack of updates etc. for agencies is due to the position you identified a few weeks back about having no time for ‘internal’ projects?
Sometimes I wonder how many people still believe that ‘having’ presence on the channel is enough, without needing to think about what role that channel has for their audience – this is probably where things are going wrong for them?
Although, long live bad takeaway menus. The one for ‘Posh Spice’ I just received made my day!