Trust me, I’m a marketer

It’s possibly a case of ‘new car’ syndrome, you know, when you are thinking of buying a new car of a certain make, model (or colour) and all of a sudden you see that type of car everywhere. But I think not. I think there really is hyperbole at work when it comes to social media at the moment. Go on, shoot me down.

Some of our clients are running ‘thought leadership’ campaigns about it; Gartner is claiming it will be the main means of business communications for 20% of us by 2014—and that’s just four years away. Everyone sees the potential, many are searching for the ‘killer app’ that will revitalise their marketing. But this is about more than taking a ‘do you want a tweet with that’ approach to marketing comms.

To illustrate, I liked Julian Tanner’s article for Fresh Business Thinking last month and the anecdote about an athlete needing to listen to his expert coach rather than the crowd. How many people have changed their minds about a purchase or a restaurant booking based on a posted review? Quite a few of us, apparently, and yet very few of us knew the reviewer or the reviewer’s credentials/motivation in making the review that we took on trust.

The power of social media is in its ability to build communities of trust. That takes more than blogging, or tweeting or Facebook—although they may all feature. They are simply the mechanisms that carry the message to your audience. We associate the term ‘Spam’ with email, but it’s just as relevant with social media. How many companies have promised you useful information and instead bombarded you with completely irrelevant sales messages? How many companies have talked about wanting to build a relationship with you but never asked what you want or given up after a few months (no doubt because it couldn’t be shown to produce enough leads)?

Social networking has opened up lots of exciting new technologies. But I bet somebody said the same when they first thought of using email for marketing purposes. Some rules don’t change much. It’s still vital to get the message right in the first place, create content that will appeal to our intended communities and stick to our promises.

What do you think? I’m keen to hear your thoughts so please feel free to add your comments below.