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Social Media: The Emperor with No Clothes?

June 21, 2010 BY Mark Evans

I’m conflicted about social media.

On one hand, I enthusiastically believe it has the potential to be a powerful and effective way to reach people and consumers in new and different ways. On the other hand, I have my reservations about how social media is being hyped and sold as the best thing since sliced bread.

To me, one of the biggest issues with social media is the obsession with strategy, tactics and tools. Not that they are a bad thing but strategy provides a plan of what to do, tactics offers details on how to do it, and the tools let you do social media.

The problem is the embrace of strategy, tactics and tools aren’t enough to be successful with social media. To make social media truly effective, you also need content and compelling stories. These elements make it possible to build relationships and engage with people in a public forum.

Many companies, however, don’t succeed with social media because they can’t or don’t embrace content and story telling. They work hard at social media by following the strategic and tactical recommendations provided by consultants or internal resources but the tools at their disposal don’t seem to have any magic in them.

At the end of the day, many companies simply give up, and dismiss social media as overblown. To them, social media is the emperor with no clothes. The emperor thinks he looks great but there’s no substance to support it.

One of the problems is the social media landscape is loaded with unrealistic expectations. The success stories, which at this stage are few and far between, are celebrated, caressed and sold as what could be. Truth be told, there aren’t that many successes to be celebrated given how many companies are now using social media.

In many ways, social media reminds me of 1996/1997 when the Web first started to emerge into the mainstream. Companies were scrambling to get onto the Web so they happily paid tens of thousands of dollars to someone who could HTML to build a static Web site with a handful of pages. Looking back, it is easy to see how these Web sites barely scratched the surface of what was possible.

The same goes for social media. There are lots of people selling social media as the new, amazing medium, and lots of companies happily jumping on the bandwagon without realizing most of the services being sold only get them halfway down the road to success.

This may be part of social media’s evolution but it’s really about time there was a lot more focus and attention on content, creativity and great stories. If you look at some of the companies that have done well with social media – Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks, T-Mobile, Blendtec – content is a key part of the mix. Yet, the market doesn’t seem ready or willing to embrace content as much as strategy, tactics and tools.

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This entry was posted in Social Media and tagged content, Social Media, stories, strategy. Bookmark the permalink.

http://www.shootingatbubbles.com Steven Hodson

Mark I totally undstand the conflict you are feeling. For the last little while I have been wondering whether all this blathering on about social media is worth the effort. It doesn’t help that people don’t want to look or talk about anything but the hype.

http://www.markevanstech.com Mark Evans

Hopefully, we’re just at a stage in the cycle where the focus is on the hype before it disappears.

http://www.shootingatbubbles.com Steven Hodson

that’s one of the reasons why I’ve pulled back of late – so tired of the endless back-patting and lack of realistic conversation both good and bad.

Joseph Smith

How do you measure success with social media? You’ve given some examples (Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks, T-Mobile, Blendtec) but how do we know, really, that they are successful? And, what does failure look like (other than rolling up the carpet and abandoning the social media channel)? It seems like you are saying, “Content is King” which was one of the persistent calls on the web. Of course, “Content is King” has been countered with the mantra, “Distribution is King.” And these two strategies continue to fight it out today.

http://www.markevanstech.com Mark Evans

Joseph,

Success is another discussion altogether. It really depends on how you want to define success. For some companies, it can be as simple as more sales. For others, it could be better customer service, more Web site traffic, a stronger brand or be seen as a better place to work. Once you define success, it can then be measured.

Mark

Joseph Smith

Well, it’s interesting that success is, “another discussion altogether,” with the following quotes from the article:

The problem is the embrace of strategy, tactics and tools aren’t enough to be successful with social media.

Many companies, however, don’t succeed with social media [...]

The success stories, which at this stage are few and far between, are celebrated [...]

[...] there aren’t that many successes to be celebrated [...]

[...] most of the services being sold only get them halfway down the road to success.

As I count it, that’s five quotes about success. I think this article is about success. I am actually interested in how people use social media and how they measure success. You’ve provided some views above. It’s difficult to operationalize some of the success criteria, like “more sales” when companies use multiple channels to communicate their message. Of course, some do measure where their sales come from by doing surveys to determine which channel brought the customer to the market. But, really, I’d like to know how companies actually measure this.

http://communitech.ca Trevor Stafford

I see social Media as the naked advisor to an already naked emperor.

I would challenge most social media managers to justify their implementations and their existence. Chances are they can’t. You’ve nailed one of the reasons for this, I think, and that’s content, but there are many more.

Lets talk content: It’s hard, it takes planning and consistency and it costs money. It takes a company that understands that it must provide value and not simply trumpet its magnificence to thousands of people who don’t give a shit.

And this leads to the crux of the problem. Most companies think that their customers actually give a damn. They don’t. Unless you’re Apple (who notably don’t ‘do’ social media), most customers could care less about your announcements or updates or product — until something goes wrong with it.

You’ve got to give them reason to care, and that could take a really long time and a company-wide commitment to transparency and delivering value, and even then your social media efforts will mostly succeed at keeping good customers close rather than growing a business.

Let me reiterate: this could take a really, really, really long time.

Something else: social media isn’t really that ‘social’. For most companies its a broadcast; a drop of water in a river of tweets or liner note on a Facebook stream. Remember: only (some) Gen-Ys and Millenials live online. For the rest of us ‘the Inernet’ is a tool, a rest stop, and a distraction. Your web and url shortening analytics will tell this story.

All of this grousing aside I don’t advocate ‘not’ doing social media. It’s a bi-directional channel that should not be ignored. It can be an extremely effective customer support tool, it’s a barometer of sorts for customer sentiment, it can humanize a company (leadership in particular). But in terms of giving companies a ‘haute couture’, I suspect it’s as you say. The emperor is indeed naked.

Good post Mark.
http://genomealberta.ca Mike Spear

Good post but cheer up, you may not be as conflicted as you think.
I completely agree that one of the reason companies or organizations fail in social media is because they don’t tell a good story and generally have weak content. Those are probably some of the same companies that have weak communications and PR in other media because they don’t have a good story to tell and have weak content. They probably also have static web sites that cost them a bundle to re-design every couple of years.
I was speaking at a social media conference last week and one of the other speakers (Rob Begg from Radian 6 ) said that “if you suck offline, you’ll suck online”.
There is bad content in print, broadcast, and at the theatres, but there is also some incredibly rich content and online isn’t that much different.
So relax Mark and let the conflict flow away for the rest of the summer. Like the Emperor, the empty tools and naked gurus will eventually be called out and I think that content will continue to be the best way to stand out.

http://www.markevanstech.com Mark Evans

Mike,

Glad to hear my “anxiety” about the lack of focus on high-quality content isn’t as isolated as I feared.

Thanks for the comment.

Mark

http://www.prconversations.com Judy Gombita

I actually sent Mike Spear a link to this post, Mark, because he described much of this need for storytelling (plus effective and innovative use of social media) his guest “PR Motion” profile on our PR Conversations blog (which is getting a ton of hits and positive Twitter commentary and attention from an international audience–Mike is just too modest to say so here).

http://www.prconversations.com/index.php/2010/06/mike-spear-evolving-from-journalism-to-pr/
http://www.onedegree.ca mose

Trevor, loved the comment. Kudos!

Mark, as always you put out ideas that are thought provoking. Kudos, part deux.

Ok enough log rolling and platitudes. Seeing as The Cluetrain just had its birthday, and I, as always, feel like the crazy lady standing on the highways overpass with the sign shouting The End is Near! Well, maybe … I freakin hope so!

The Cluetrain happily, succinctly spelled this out like 10 years ago. But as we bright bunny netizens who happen to have the attention spans of gnats, can neither remember nor recall what was said … and truthfully they have never rad it – lemme paraphrase.(BTW The Cluetrain on Twitter has way less followers than either of my cats. just sayin.) Who knew it would be the online world that really needed to get a clue?

We have adopted this Net thing faster than we adopted fire. And, when we get tired of hearing ourselves speak, then we will discover what the hell this is for.

There is NO social media. Like saying yo have 3000 people in one place and it is a cluster. Well, could be a cluster f… nope editing here – see I do have restraint? Who knew? the net is rife with folks shooting arrows on a wall and THEN drawing targets around them. Total bullshit.

I love the this online thing. Have been online since the 80s. I love that I can speak to someone across the globe, learn stuff and be enthralled by what I trip over online. To put a marketing spin on the online world is defeating the purpose of the online world. Cluetrain again – market is a noun. This was never designed for advertising. And just cause we can measure and do analytics does not mean they are worth a hill of beans. Me at one end – you at the other. If the other someone in this conversation is a company, wow. I might even listen. If the other end of this conversation is a company selling me end-to-end solutions? I pick up a book and read it. Oh, and vow to never buy their products.
Terry Donnelly

I think the issue is actually about sincerity. Social media is in essence a layer of transparency draped over top of all other media, and that transparency is created by the perspectives and authentication provided by those who are consuming whatever content is being thrown at them by whatever medium they are choosing to engage with.
So, if you’re not prepared to be transparent in your communications and proposition to whomever is at the other end, or at least in some form or fashion, relevant, then don’t bother. Because you’re actually damaging your relationship with them, by demonstrating a lack of integrity.

And I can guarantee you, the person at the other end does not care if you are a person, company, not for profit or any other entity. If there’s no integrity in the relationship, then it just doesn’t work.

I would suggest your fear about lack of high quality content is actually a fear about a lack of integrity in the content you are consuming.