Of Babies and Bathwater, Part II

Image by HubSpot via Flickr

Given that any job opening today one step above entry level generally requires three to five years of experience in the field to be considered merely sufficient, what does it say about the plethora or Social Media Experts flooding the marketing field today?

In a field barely five years old, it is difficult to suggest that even Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the accidentally successful social media site Facebook, knows enough to consider himself an expert at how social media should be efficiently added to a traditional marketing mix.

"Traditional marketing mix? That’s because social media breaks all the rules! It isn't traditional!", will say my distracters, and by doing so, prove my point.

Didn't we hear this, a dozen years ago, when Internet entrepreneurs suggested that those of us still relying on P/E ratios didn't understand that 'click-thrus' and 'page views' were the new currency? "That’s because the Internet breaks all the rules! It isn't traditional!", I seem to recall them saying.

The blog entry below this post, linked by Zemanta, explains just one of the reasons that marketing in this environment isn't as simple as latching onto the latest marketing tool. Saying you 'do' marketing is easy. Actually doing it, and doing it well, is far more challenging.

Social Media is a new tool for marketers, a potentially efficient way to accelerate personal conversations with a brand's 'tribe', as Seth Godin would describe their most vocal and active consumers. A new tool, and just a tool, like the web, television, radio, newspaper, town criers, and signs etched in sandstone that came before it. It is not a revolution - no matter how successful political activists were last year in leveraging the media to communicate with… other political activists.

Twittering, blogging, actively posting on Facebook, sharing photos on Flickr, posting on Digg, are all experiential. Experiencing it doesn't make an expert. I'm on my fourth dog, yet I still feel compelled to take it to the vet for treatment. That's the critical difference between having an experience and being an expert.

Even Social Media Experts at established firms like Agency.com tried it with client Skittles and succeeded only in spiking discussion of the candy's brand in a negative light, visits to the site equally mixed between social media "experts" blogging on the ill-fated experiment and giggling preteens excited to see their indiscriminate use of foul language posted prominently on the site.

Integrated Marketing Communications remains a proven and successful strategy for developing and executing successful marketing campaigns. Integrating Web 2.0 and Social Media will most certainly be a critical part of this planning. But it cannot be done effectively in a vacuum by self-proclaimed social media experts lacking essential marketing skill sets and an understanding of basic, proven marketing concepts that can leverage these new tools to even greater influence. That’s babies and bathwater, experts and experience.

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