Social Media is just a tool.
Some of my fellow LevelTen coworkers might do a double take regarding that statement, given the way I've talked about and promoted social media over the past couple of weeks, but it's true.
Ultimately, just about every task the LevelTen marketing department undertakes for a client, be that
SEO, SEM, PR, or any form of
Internet Marketing is simply a subset of tools under the general Marketing category.
But don't get me wrong.
I love social media, and I think it has a lot to offer end users and clients alike. There are aspects of marketing that social media does REALLY well - better then we could ever hope to do with traditional Internet marketing strategies. Social media can be...
- A connections facilitator, especially within the local community.
- A brand and image builder.
- A utility for simple promotion (but this shouldn't be the focus)
- An educational tool.
- A relationship builder.
- Many more then I have time to talk about today
And as much as I like social media, I have to keep reminding myself that social media will never, ever, be the be all and end all - or even the future of internet marketing. Marketing a company, product, or website on the internet requires a detailed and thorough understanding of the target market - where these people live online, so to speak. Most internet users spend their time in a variety of outlets, so you'll need to reach them via a collection of tools, not just one. Our Director here likes to use the phrase, "It's another tool in our toolbox" whenever he talks about something new that we can offer a client, and this applies for social media too. You wouldn't try to fix a car with a wrench - you'd use a wrench, screwdriver, blowtorch, hammer - or any combination thereof, and internet marketing is the same exact way.
If you can't do a handful of things really well - you won't survive the internet.
And at the risk of sounding too sales-pitchy, that's what's so great about LevelTen. We don't subsribe to just one theory of marketing, and we don't have an expertise in just one marketing discipline. We have our hands in multiple buckets - and we do a buch of different things very well, which might be why our clients recieve such a great
return on investment.
Social Media Future
I'd like to point you in the direction of one of my favorite social media bloggers - Chris Brogan. In a recent blog post, he brings up the question -
Is Twitter the Future? And I think he brings up a great point. When AOL first started their AIM Instant Messenger service, it was, for the time, a revolutionary communication tool - and altered the direction of digital communication. Twitter, and many other social media outlets, are simply evolutions of a digital communication method that first began with AOL.
And what do we know about evolution?
Things always change.
So to answer his question, no, Twitter (and social media) is not the future. It is the present, and it will impact the future - but it doesn't stop here.
That said, the insights provided by social media, and the ways in which one can use it effectively will still be important to learn and understand. It's like understanding Algebra before moving on to Calculus. You need to know the principals that the current generation of social media can teach you before you can truley understand any future variations.
In a future post, I'll have to discuss what some of those principals are, but that might be getting way beyond the scope of this article.
And that's where I'm going to end this discussion. Which is another thing to remember - social media is too new for anyone to be an expert on the subject. So you'll see more discussions about social media and its impact on Internet and marketing in the future.
Untill next time folks.
