Log into Facebook (wait, you're already logged in on another tab!) and visit the pages of 5 of your favourite brands. Or any 5 brands. I'm pretty sure all the posts on that page are promoting the products/services of that brand with plenty of attractive pictures. If you do the same on Twitter, again, you'll find a similar result. Only this time, there will be a link to the brand's website or to a place where you can buy the product, instead of a picture.
This is how nearly every brand is using social media today. Without engaging content, they are measuring the likes to these meaningless clutter that they throw up at regular intervals on their followers' timelines and are then complaining that all the likes do not result in any improvement in actual sales and are blaming social media for being ineffective as a marketing channel.
This year has seen a huge rise in talk about content marketing. This being the time for end-of-year (no its not the end of the world) reviews and wrap ups, every such marketing review has a section dedicated to the rise of and the potential of content marketing. And they're all written by industry stalwarts and Professors.
Yet, its all talk and no implementation.
Every time I read something related to this, I wonder why we see so little implementation. Finally, I read this article by Seth Godin today which, while read in this context, makes so much sense.
I'm assuming (that means I could be wrong) the people who post from the brand pages or tweet from the brand Twitter accounts are employees belonging to the lower rung in the brand's organisation and have little understanding of the potential this interactive platform offers. If this assumption holds, then it makes a lot of sense as to why the communication from the brands on these platforms seems like an extension to their myriad advertisements on other platforms and fails abysmally in engaging customers and building a relationship for the long term.
It would only be prudent to allocate this job to people who understand what the platform has to offer the brand. Of course, there's the option of outsourcing this function to an expert organisation that can dedicate excellent resources to the task. But, that's not one I'd choose as someone who engages customers of ten different brands (say) simultaneously will never be as passionate as I myself will be about my brand.
Its up to the brands to recognise the importance and the potential of communicating and creating meaningful content for the social media platforms and allocate people and other resources to it accordingly.
This is how nearly every brand is using social media today. Without engaging content, they are measuring the likes to these meaningless clutter that they throw up at regular intervals on their followers' timelines and are then complaining that all the likes do not result in any improvement in actual sales and are blaming social media for being ineffective as a marketing channel.
This year has seen a huge rise in talk about content marketing. This being the time for end-of-year (no its not the end of the world) reviews and wrap ups, every such marketing review has a section dedicated to the rise of and the potential of content marketing. And they're all written by industry stalwarts and Professors.
Yet, its all talk and no implementation.
Every time I read something related to this, I wonder why we see so little implementation. Finally, I read this article by Seth Godin today which, while read in this context, makes so much sense.
I'm assuming (that means I could be wrong) the people who post from the brand pages or tweet from the brand Twitter accounts are employees belonging to the lower rung in the brand's organisation and have little understanding of the potential this interactive platform offers. If this assumption holds, then it makes a lot of sense as to why the communication from the brands on these platforms seems like an extension to their myriad advertisements on other platforms and fails abysmally in engaging customers and building a relationship for the long term.
It would only be prudent to allocate this job to people who understand what the platform has to offer the brand. Of course, there's the option of outsourcing this function to an expert organisation that can dedicate excellent resources to the task. But, that's not one I'd choose as someone who engages customers of ten different brands (say) simultaneously will never be as passionate as I myself will be about my brand.
Its up to the brands to recognise the importance and the potential of communicating and creating meaningful content for the social media platforms and allocate people and other resources to it accordingly.
CONVERSATION