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I came across a great article, “Social Media Needs Fewer Experts“. This article really gets to the heart of the issue. One of my favorite quotes is the following,
Talking about success in social is easy (“let’s make a viral video”), delivering on that talk is anything but. Execution and delivery is how you sort the wheat from the chaff nowadays. The reality in social is very different to how many will present it: A best practice of six months ago may be old hat now.
The next time you meet up with a social media expert, ask them how they executed and delivered their social media project for a particular client. In my experience, you may hear things like the following:
- we helped increase company xyz’s follower and like counts
- we setup a company profile on 5 different social media platforms
- we created a video
- we contribute 5 articles a month.
My point here is that social media is much more and everyone is contributing to making social media a term that must warrant some kind of discussion when discussing company initiatives or marketing strategy.
More help is needed in the area of implementation and monitoring. There are hundreds of analytics tools, but when was the last time you heard of an innovative implementation process where you could see results in the form of dollars and new clients. This is the piece that marketers, consultants and agencies need to focus on. For me working with social media is a work-in-process everyday. Implementing, incorporating and monitoring are the places I am spending my time.
This space is always changing. The quicker you can implement, adjust and implement again, the better you will be in the long run.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
