We Tend to Forget: Social is Not the Hero of the Story

We all know there is great value in the social network. First of all, if you’re reading this, you’re already tuned in to the most important one for business professionals. But, and I say this hesitantly as someone commonly referred to as a digital and social marketer and not at all as a frustrated parent of a teenager, methinks we glorify it just a little too much.

I know, you’re shocked. No one has ever claimed this before. But hear me out. This isn’t about our addictions and obsessions, but truly about our business priorities and whether they are grounded in the right place.

We know we need to be on social networks. It’s the how and why of it that we tend to get wrong, such as not segmenting social channels, which I write about here . Within marketing functions, our toughest job is to attribute sales outcomes through digital analytics to understand where social adds the most value in the sales funnel and how to use it to meet different customers at the right stage of their individual buyer journeys. This requires an integrated content approach that, frankly, many organizations aren’t staffed or budgeted to support.

We tend to put more emphasis on a regular posting schedule than we do on having new and relevant material that is worth posting. Content is king, or so we claim. Social can be the queen, but that still takes second place. So while social isn’t supposed to be the hero of the story, it can be a helper.

The material supported by a social strategy requires other channels to host it as well as a committed budget. Just as ease-of-use spurs digital adoption, the challenge for most organizations is that social is easy, it’s free, it’s accessible to everyone, it has unmatched audience participation within your customer segment, which means it’s never going to get trimmed from a marketing plan. We frequently scrap plans and scale back budgets during the year and commit ourselves to quick, easy, and free methods, forgetting that social is here to elevate the performance of all the other channels.

If you’re not connecting social media to other channels, you’re missing the forest for the trees. Worse, you're showing visitors a forest that has no trees! And along the way, it’s easy to lose sight of one of social’s most important attributes: the ability to engage, have a conversation, and develop a relationship. You have to give them some trees to marvel at and talk about.

Social media is and always has been about people and their relationships. Its core value is that it enables deeper, meaningful conversations, within organic communities that have opted to follow your organization. As a social marketer, you have the unique power to control the conversation and focus your network on the specific messages you choose to share.

With this power, while social media is “just” the helper, marketers should still be proud to plant a stake in the corporate ground that reads: “Social Media Was Here.” Through deepened, nurtured relationships, we know that the right content and conversations, timed well, have far-reaching impact on customer buying decisions. Because organic social communities have opted in to following us, we know it is a safe environment to test new and creative forms of content. We can afford to experiment and have a little fun, not be perfectly filtered and manicured 24/7. This will help break down digital silos and create more conversation.?

Finally, while social media shouldn’t be the entirety of your marketing plan, its usage should be strategically connected to your business objectives. Whether it’s building brand recognition, expanding the reach of thought leadership content, connecting with customers and influencers, or attracting and retaining talent, identifying specific and measurable goals for your social program sets you up to quantify results and prove success from the beginning. You should be able to easily say, "We use social in this way because it has this impact on our business." But like we tell our teenagers, and as we all learned during quarantine months, don’t forget that the deepest relationships happen in offline settings. Build your conversations and sustain engagement off of social media in order to maximize your strategy on social channels.

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Melissa Reali-Elliott has spent over 15 years marketing digital technologies. Her marketing efforts have supported organizations specializing in gaming software, IoT, RFID, supply chain, and power distribution to utility markets, including smart grid and microgrid applications, as well as industry verticals such as data centers, oil & gas, metal refineries, and food & bev. She is accomplished at developing and implementing innovative marketing, branding, and messaging programs that improve market position and drive demand generation, as well as inspire customer and industry engagement with a brand.

If you are just landing on this series, the background for its creation is in the first post here . The gist is that the data center industry where Melissa specializes does not have many formally-trained marketers dedicated to it and many of those that actually are are newer to industry. She wants to use her years of experience to help bridge the gap between industry influencers and technical marketers.

A general closing note from Melissa: In my efforts to share experiences and data that help others in the data center space to improve their marketing efforts, I often use both positive and negative examples, some of which will be from companies I have personally worked for or done business with. No anecdote will reveal proprietary information that can be tied to a company. Neither will I cite an organization I have worked for by name. While none are perfect, these companies have been fundamental to my success and have provided my life’s work. I respect them too much to attribute public criticism to their brands, though it is inevitable that those who have worked alongside me will pick up on certain references.