Beware of the Social Media Rock Stars

Check out this post from Axel Schultze. If you like it here’s the original post.

The social media rock stars who do a few campaign masterpieces are finding new competition from business process savvy consultants who take social media way beyond the campaign level on the marketing side. Co-creation is the known buzzword, listening to customers and building the right next-generation product the executable part of it.

The social media marketing campaign is only one piece of the cross functional social media puzzle. Even before developing a social media strategy a comprehensive assessment of customers, brand, partners and competitors is typically the starting point. Resource allocation management and funds allocation including ROI calculations are standard elements in a professional social media tool box.

If all you want to do is a cool social media campaign and get a ton of followers you are not much further along than the ones who hope to get 100 Million eye balls through sponsored links. But if you honestly care about your customers and try to develop a profoundly better customer experience, then think beyond the “cool” and start building a holistic cross-functional strategy — so that service, support, product design and sales are a homogeneous force and the customer experience is something your customer recognizes.

So based on these assumptions it is still back to the basics with Social Media if you really want to use it as a tool. I thing there are way to many people out there drowning in too many “Social Media Tools” and not understanding that you don’t get new clients by thinking social media is a tool for generating direct sails. Do your research, find out what a large group of people would want and than make a product that meets those needs. Everything after that is PR and informational communication.