Why Marketers Get Social Media Wrong: It’s About the Audience’s Motivation, Silly
According to a recent Social Media Examiner report, 97 percent of marketers said they’re participating in social media marketing, up from 94 percent last year. Eighty-six percent of marketers said social media is important to their business, and 61 percent of marketers said they’re generating leads from social media marketing efforts. But why do so many marketers still get social media wrong?
“Because they don’t understand why the audience is there,” writes Jason Falls, founder of Social Media Explorer’s blog.
Falls explains that in search, you know that the searcher is in buying mode and actively looking for a solution. On social sites, users aren’t looking for an answer to a problem, nor are they searching. Most likely, they aren’t even looking to interact with brands. They’re simply there to be social with other people.
For companies on social channels, the key is to have a different expectation or time line of conversion. On social media, it’s about nurturing relationships with existing customers, developing new ones with prospects and being “glad for conversions whenever they may occur.”
This is another reminder for marketers and brands to check themselves before jumping headlong into a social media channel because it’s trendy. Approaching any of these channels should be based on the audience that resides there, not about the platform itself.
