Warning: social media “experts”

As a digital marketing person I have seen a lot of clients who were conned into believing that social media marketing was the answer to lagging sales and poor marketing. We now know that social media marketing is an oxymoron and that a lot of these people were only experts in selling their books, agencies or big fees for speaking at conferences.

Social media are very much integrated into the online lives of a lot of people but with this power consumers are telling marketers to “leave us alone”. They don’t want to be bothered with irrelevant ads and the idea that consumers actually want to have a “relationship” with a brand on social media is myopic. However, that didn’t stop the ‘experts” like “Guy” and “Jay” from convincing brands that social media marketing was a must have.

Now don’t get me wrong; brands need to listen to consumers who have questions, comments or complaints about their products via social media, but you don’t really need a Facebook page or an Instagram account to succeed in marketing your product.

Why were pseudoexperts so successful in conning, I mean selling, their services?

1ne: They tapped into a trend and sold social media marketing as a way to overcome bad products and marketing.

2wo: There are a lot of very bad marketers out there who need help.

3hree: The experts were very good at selling themselves, even though most had never provided “hard metrics” on how they had helped sell the product.

At the same time consumers weren’t paying attention and the organic reach of Facebook declined into irrelevancy.

Make sure you ask people, who consider themselves “experts” what they have “actually done” beyond “likes” or “reach” in social media. Give me someone who listens and can put themselves into the consumers place and ask “what’s in it for me?”