There’s a battle in the agencies over social media. Doug Walker at Webwalker blogs about this battle, and looks for the middle ground between advertising people and public relations people doing social media marketing. I’m not sure either community should be doing this.
Social media (blogging, really) belongs to the people and the community, and more often than not, the heavy hand of marketing (advertising and PR) tromps into the social media sphere like a herd of elephants. And everyone trembles when the CEO blogs. Actually, Seth Godin makes a good point. Blogging is based on candor, urgency, timeliness, pithiness, utility and controversy. Not a typical CEO. And the calculated words of both advertisers and PR people fail at several of these points.
Blogging and social media by it’s very nature is entrepreneurial: quick and driven by personality rather than policy. Bloggers are single people giving their voice, their opinions and sometimes, bucking the trends. Microsoft doesn’t have a blog; Richard Scoble blogs, and happens to work (have worked) at Microsoft. Google doesn’t have a blog; Matt Cutts blogs and happens to work at Google. For many in SEO/SEM, Matt is the face and voice of Google. And, surprise, surprise, Matt is not a marketing guy. He’s an engineer. Scoble is not a “marketer” per se (despite a title of “Director of Marketing”) - he is best know as an evangelist.
Keeping up a regular blog (not a “blog campaign” - ugh) takes the passion of an evangelist. It takes the desire to be involved - not because you are told to (or paid by the client), but because you need to. Please keep in mind that these techniques - journaling, media bookmarking in the form of sending links to friends, etc. - have all been around long before “Social Media Marketing”. Are marketers are seeing this passion, and trying to force feed it to their clients? Are the clients seeing this passion amongst their people, and trying to turn it to bottom-line goals? Does the passion become dilute when applied commercially?
And I tremble at the idea of the “SMM Campaign”. That doesn’t get more calculated and unnatural - all of the things that social media isn’t.
Update: Doug Walker summed up the post a little too accurately (is it warm in here?). Should marketers stay out of the blogosphere? Um…
My response on his blog:
Unless they are talking about marketing. That’s interesting.
Maybe I should step back a little tiny bit and ask the question: How can marketers find the evangelists with the organization to blog, and how can marketers facilitate blogging, including convincing the upper levels of management to go along with this.
Marketers-as-bloggers (unless they are talking about marketing) is scary IMHO. If I said that marketers don’t have a place in SMM, I’d be shooting myself in the foot. But is the role a traditional advertising/PR role? I don’t think so; it’s a new channel looking for new approaches.
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October 29th, 2007 at 10:16 am
[…] Interesting post from Dave on DesignWalk about this topic, where he comments that marketing people should stay out of the […]
October 29th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Cross-posting my response on my blog here as well.
Dave, I think that Social Media marketing goes way past blogging and I think you are circling around ghost-blogging (or communications professionals blogging on behalf of someone else), which is almost completely taboo in my books. SMM does not just have to be about blogging. In my opinion podcasting, for example, screams out for assistance from communicators and technology people to make it easier for the client, promote the podcast and crafting the actual content, even if they aren’t behind the mic.
I agree wholeheartedly with your point that traditional ad or PR “approaches” are doomed to failure in this space and do us all great harm. Bloggers are like journalists in some ways and totally different in others, they are also sort of like consumers too, but not. Let’s make a distinction between traditional marketing approaches and the actual practitioners. From my experience, some of the best and the worst SMM is done by PR or Ad people - the best by the ones who are willing to learn new lessons and the worst by the ones who aren’t.
So is your argument that PR and Ad people have no place in SMM unless they are blogging about their own disciplines? If so, I disagree with you completely there. There is loads of knowledge and expertise in professional commercial communications that translates well into social media and also many lessons to be learned by all of us. Good professional communications people know and respect differences in media channels.
October 29th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Hearing PR lumped into marketing certainly makes me cringe… but in agreement with Douglas, I think you’ve seriously over-simplified what social media is. I in no way advocate PR people jumping into every little social media fad that comes along. At the same time, I do think it’s important that they know what social media actually is to determine their place in it (or that of others)… and it’s much more than blogging.
But on another note… I believe Google actually does have an official Google blog outside of Matt Cutts’. ;)
October 29th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
I guess I am looking at as ghost blogging (because I’ve been asked to do it - NFW), using a blog as a vehicle for marketing messages by marketing people (”look at us, we’re great” I’ve been asked to do it - NFW), gaming Digg, del.icio.us, etc., and uploading corporate marketing blather to YouTube (again, by marketing people). I’m also involved in “socal marketing” with people who don’t really give a fig about talking with their audience; they only want to talk at their audience, and don’t understand the difference.
We’re in a unique situation, bring heavily involved ourselves in social media. I don’t think most marketers get SM and the delicate touch needed to approach SM audiences, especially in this early stage. Think how sensitive the webosphere was in 1995 towards the encroachment of advertising and corporate web sites.
As web design is a different beast from print design, SMM is a different beast from marketing, and maybe I am having the misfortune of working with people who haven’t made the jump.
October 30th, 2007 at 8:03 am
“Blogging and social media by it’s very nature is entrepreneurial”
Who says marketers can’t be entrepreneurial? :)
October 30th, 2007 at 8:53 am
I’m not saying it can’t be entrepreneurial, but when blogging gets tied up in editing cycles (been there), heavy policy over what you can and can’t say (been there) and marketing messages (been there), the nature of the medium changes. And I don’t like what it becomes. Although I should probably do one more editing cycle than I already do… :)
October 30th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Thanks for another view. I also have sat in those meetings, talking about blogging on message and how it needs to go through legal to make sure it’s okay, and can the PR team take a first crack.
If a company doesn’t want to blog, it shouldn’t. Unfortunately, too many PR firms love to sell in the idea of a corporate blog.
October 30th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Thanks Jeremy. When I first started doing web sites in the mid 90s, I had to start asking companies why they wanted a web site. More often than not, they said it was because everyone else had one, or a business magazine had talked about it. They didn’t actually know what to do with it.
I see corporate blogging in the same way. Deja vu all over again.
October 30th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
It’s worse than deja vu - it’s like deja vu with acid thrown in there to really mess things up.
I would try to talk companies out of blogging based on just time issues. Usually worked.
I’d rather they take part in the conversation that was out there already, rather than blog. There is more ROI because they get to listen.