I want to warn you: If you want your sales to skyrocket or you want everyone to be aware of your product tomorrow, social media might not be the right marketing method for you. I have many VPs of marketing assuming that if they employ social media – and only social media – within a month, they will have a Facebook Page Fan base of 10,000. I point out that only 4% of Facebook Fan pages have a Fan base of 10,000 and above.
One has to have a little history in the Internet world to truly understanding this phenomenon. Let’s use a real life example. Back in the early 90s, if you created a Web page, you were pretty much guaranteed a fast audience. Why?
Here are three reasons:
1. Because there was no where else to go.
Consumers adopt new mediums before advertisers do, therefore the first to market in new technology has an advantage because their more conservative competitors are not there yet. [Tim Bray calculated that there were only 90,000 Web sites in 1995. http://mundi.net/maps/maps_002/]
2. Because new things are cool/attractive.
As with any trend or new technology, social media follows the Technology Adoption Lifecycle. Statistics show that the Late Majority is now adopting social media. The innovators were adopting social media back in the late-90s before the term “Social Media” was even developed.
3. Because they often offer solutions to problems.
I remember distinctly in 1996 going to Barnes and Noble in NYC and not being able to find a book about the political situation in Guatemala. (Don’t think I am all that erudite. I was intrigued by a cute architect who was Guatemalan.) I got to chatting with a fellow customer in the store, and he directed me to a website called Amazon “where you can buy any book you want.” Wow! Over the next 14 years, I have spent in excess of $1,000 annually on Amazon! (Sometimes –ahem- well over.)
The same parallel can be made for social media. When the “Will it Blend?” campaign launched, it was new and exciting and innovative (brilliant, really), and there wasn’t very much else to watch on YouTube. So it took off.
But we have passed that point. Social media has hit mass numbers and now, your conservative competitors at a minimum, have a Facebook Page. You have competition. Just putting up a Facebook Page or sending out a Tweet is not going to get the over-the-top response your early adopter cousins had.
You need a social media marketing plan and implementers of your plan who know what they are doing.
Have you built it, and the people just aren’t there yet? What are you doing to change that dynamic?