Social Media Strategies - Most Fail!
Everybody here at PopularMedia got a chuckle out of the recent JupiterMedia research on viral marketing. The big surprise? Only 15% of viral marketing efforts “caught on” and actually became viral.
The cat’s out of the bag now! Actually, the news was no real surprise to us. Most marketers are clueless when it comes to developing a social media strategy. They rely on ambitious creative executions that succumb to the inevitable. They either get watered down by the content police, or fattened up with the kind of marketing schlock the world could care less about.
Achieving real viral marketing results starts with strategy. You need to test multiple approaches to your program — content, creative, offers, experiences — whatever is strategic and on-brand for you. Analyze the data. Figure out what out what the world will find engaging, useful, funny or entertaining — and don’t be so darn sure of yourself as to skip this critical step. As we put it last week: your job as a marketer is to figure out what’s going to make people sneeze. It’s a critical step, adopted by far too few marketers.
The Jupiter piece also dissed advertising on social networks. Why? They’re too cluttered, they say. That may be the case with MySpace. But ask just about anyone who has done a banner buy on Facebook (noted for its clean UI) how their media buy performed. They’ll tell you it stank. Again, no surprise to us. People are on Facebook to connect. To entertain themselves. Get scoop. Poke friends. That audience isn’t mindlessly surfing, distracted by monkeys bouncing around trees. They’re highly, highly engaged with the property and they’re engaged with their social circle. They’ve got no time for you. And just when you thought those crazy kids couldn’t be any more clever, they go and do something like this. Now we’re talking!