Make Digital Marketing Work

I saw a quote this morning that proclaimed twitter and social media is like a bunch of teenagers experimenting with sex.  Try as I might I can’t help but agree wholeheartedly with this.  Every generation thinks they invented sex and cannot conceive of a time when anyone other than themselves were having sex.  No amount of tales of copulation in the street at the end of the first world war or clandestine couplings in Green Park during the Second World war blackout will ever persuade the current generation that anything happened between couples for any other purpose except procreation before they worked out that they had genitals.  Not even tales of the swinging sixties or pre aids 80s can do anything to dispel this view amongst the young that the multiple orgasm is something they invented.

(Yes I know I am going too far, but you get the point?)

So it is with social media.  A generation of digital natives has come along and is now telling the fuddy duddy directors of companies that they do not know what they are doing and need to change the way they do business into some kind of hippy social media love in.  I think the analogy stands up with everyone sitting around and talking about things they do not fully understand and have limited experience of but with a dogma that is born of idealism and against a backdrop of an uncertain world.

I could just as easily be writing about my own experiences of early adulthood in the 80s or my mother’s in the fifties or my grandfather’s in the 30s as I could be writing about the world of business today and in every example whilst the younger generation has something to say you wouldn’t take every word as gospel would you?

Marketing activity of any kind and specifically digital marketing needs to be part of an overall marketing strategy and needs to produce a return on investment.  Don’t let anyone tell you different.

I am cheating slightly because I have already written a fair amount of this entry on another blog entry by Aliza Sherman

as a comment but I couldn’t keep quiet.

There is a brand new organisation that has been set up.  They are called the International Social Media Association (ISMA).  Their site (which I cannot grace with a backlink and retain my self respect) features a logo of the world with an undefined insect in the middle of it (now there’s some appropriate brand association) and clouds form the background, presumably to display the blue sky thinking of the organisation.  Basically it’s a walking cliché.  The standard of build has some issues as well, and it might be that I am a snob but if you work in the web then you should at the very least know the difference between good and bad web design from both an aesthetic and technical point of view.  There are free tools out there to help you so there is no excuse.  It is generating a lot of traffic though especially seeing as how it is only a few months old, and has already managed to amass over 140 backlinks.

I may be old and cynical but it seems to be that as soon as someone creates a new defined boutique discipline in the wired world, then the first thing that happens is that someone decides to create an ad format for it and then writes a book, then someone declares themselves a consultant or expert and starts touting themselves around the exhibition circuit and also writes a book, then someone else simply cashes in on the growing hype and only writes a book (and gets most things wrong in it), then someone creates an Association of (enter boutique name here).  Usually (not always) all four of these people are chancers who are making it up as they go along.

I’ve been wondering for a while what with the recent adoption in SEO circles of a well known phrase in academia, if I started an Association of Digital Natives and offered training at a thousand bucks a pop together with a certificate whether

A) Any idiots would send me money

B) Whether anyone outside of academia would get the joke.

This pretty much sums up my attitude (as someone who has been a digital marketing professional for fifteen years working for top agencies all over the world) to most certification programs.

If someone starts talking about Social Media I would say ask them about what the two words mean… both of them.  If you practice in the media you should at the very least know what the word means even if you do work in a particular segment of it.  Next ask them what they can actually achieve for your buinsess in terms of actual hard delvierables and get them to sign a money back guarantee on that.  If they start to waffle on about how social media doesn’t work like that, then end the meeting abruptly.

So much of what I hear about “Strategy” this and “Strategies” that isn’t strategy at all, its tactics.  Using Twitter isn’t a strategy, neither is Facebook.  Digital marketing strategy is about deciding what success looks like and how to measure it and then using the tools at your disposal to achieve the strategic goals you have set.

So much of social media that I see amounts to nothing more than a few people having a chat with no clear objective in mind.  If that was suggested in a boardroom as a sales tactic it would be laughed out of the room quicker than a Wall Street banker vanishes to the Hamptons at weekends in summer.  Aimless tactics of this nature might be something some companies want to waste money on but they should be under no illusion that any of that activity adds up to marketing.

ISMA Itself is offering free membership to people (which by nature means that membership is worthless and they will take anyone) and a series of graded paid memberships together with an accreditation program for $2,795.  When I looked for information about the founders I was greeted with video and photographs with saccharine sweet smiles and a mention of expertise dating back to early 2007.  Well sit me down and hand me the caffeine, a whole two years ago.  Tempted?  No we were not either.