Social network marketing is a con! So stop telling me to sign up on Twitter.

29Sep09

So, I’m at the store and one of my friends starts giving his usual advice.  This time, it was about how to market online.  See, according to him, everyone is on twitter.. All I need to do is create a twitter page and boom.. I’ll have more customers than I could ever dream of..  Oh, not to mention that a Facebook page or Myspace along with a Linkedin page is all I really need.  Hell, I could make thousands of friends a day..  That’s all the marketing one could ask for right?!..   Wrong!.. wrong wrong.. wrong.. 

Herein lays a problem.  Marketing via social media is bullshit.  It is a fallacy.  It is essentially a con game.  The most interesting thing that I have noticed is when these types of conversations happen with random people who feel as though they are really on to something, it turns out that they fundamentally believe what they large social media companies want you to believe.  Don’t get me wrong.  Before making this assessment I made sure to cover my bases by actually trying this stuff out.  And then I researched it.  (Its my job, can’t help it)  There is nothing conclusive in the form of a case study or white paper that states, you will make more money by using a social networking account.  The only research out there says.. “There is potential however the industry must find a way to harness it.” 

The reason why there isn’t anything concrete is because it doesn’t work.  Twitter, Myspace and the rest of them have went through a lot of trouble making the public believe that their websites blew up overnight just from word of mouth.  And from the brainless, no-researched backed pitches made by other people supporting that myth is directly related to those companies’ strategic efforts.  See, making people believe that their product is popular just from other people is good for business.  It’s the crowded restaurant scenario.  You drive by, it’s crowded so it must be good.  No one told you how the food is, you just assumed it’s good because it’s crowded.  Now, the tricky part is convincing the public the website is crowded without actually allowing them to see for themselves.  In a nutshell, all of the major social networking players spent millions of dollars to convince you that their websites organically grew just from people having a personal interest alone.  What they have really done is used a very sophisticated product placement marketing model to integrate their name and brand into your everyday conversation.

For example, the next time you watch the news, try to count the number of times facebook or twitter or craigslist is mentioned.  The next time you pick up Time or Newsweek, do the same.  The news stories are never about those websites in particular, they are in reference to how someone else has used those sites for something.  To get that kind of coverage takes a lot of creative PR work.  And it is not cheap.  The result is, you have a reinforced brand that is delivered by un-expected media outlets.  There are few companies that are just upfront with it.  For example “Bing” from Microsoft just said the hell with it and ran TV ads.  But Google, they rather use news, and product placement to get the name out.  Google’s model is more successful in this instance because people feel as though they are in the know.  As opposed to “Bing” which is available to use but not really the same as being in the “know”.

Now back to the original point.  Twitter sucks as a marketing tool if you are interested in getting people to buy something.  I am in the business of getting people to buy my services so using a method that does not help that effort is a waste.  Myspace is the same.  These companies have made an effort to get people interested however it is not exactly in the context of buying something.  People are interested because of ego and sex.  Not for finding new stuff to buy.  It is the same as having a store front with nice stuff in the window but locking the door.  And if you were to take it a step further and do an analysis of all marking mediums, social web marketing is way behind. 

The effectiveness of a campaign can be measured in the following 4 factors:

1. Time to market
2. Reach
3. Impact
4. Cost

Now, if you want to find the most inefficient means of marketing try one that has the longest time to market (you have to manually select and send friend invites), smallest reach (only one user account at a time per friend invite), the lowest impact (people use those sites for sex and ego, not purchasing) however, it is the smallest cost in dollars.  So, the barrier for entry is the lowest but the results are the worst.

In summary, don’t suggest that a person should market their goods or services using a social networking site unless that person is broke or stupid.

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Tags: entrepenuer, facebook, linkedin, marketing, myspace, online marketing, social networking, twitter, web marketing