Is Quality Still King?
Posted on | September 28, 2009 | No Comments
A colleague, Polly Traylor, recently reflected on the role of corporate-sponsored content in marketing, especially as social-media marketing becomes more mainstream. Her analysis was intriguing, and prompts a question about the diminution of high-quality substance in most commercial marketing materials these days.
Businesses are starting to catch the “social-media marketing” buzz. Suddenly, Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts and such are the latest fad to hit corporate marketing departments; unfortunately, although the basics of marketing are timeless, the deftness of approach for deploying SMM tactics has been inconsistent across the industry.
It is fascinating, for example, that one of my own clients recently received a Twitter direct message from a self-styled SMM guru, saying that Tony is the first attorney she has seen who has figured out how to use Twitter and his law blog appropriately. Kudos to Mr. Snyder, but he is doing what should be a basic — he is using SMM as a tool to drive potential clients to his primary marketing tool, which is his law blog. Twitter and Facebook are not substitutes for traditional marketing; rather, they are simply new distribution channels governed under the same principles that have guided the practice of marketing for years.
Some businesses are savvy to this distinction, and some are not. The amount of hype about Twitter and Facebook being the new must-have trend betray a profound misunderstanding between a process and a product. SMM is a process to drive people to a more polished marketing product. It is not a product in itself in almost all normal business cases.
This prompts the inevitable question: If SMM is a tool rather than a product, then don’t the traditional rules of marketing still govern? Well, yes. And the chief rule is to give your clients something of value. In short, deliver quality content.
For many businesses, a robust Web presence is the cornerstone of an on-demand marketing strategy. Compelling content on a Web site — perhaps a blog, and video clips, or podcasts — draws consumers in and increase your presence-of-mind with them, the longer you can keep them captive at your domain.
SMM isn’t a substitute for a Web presence. In fact, its primary goal should be to drive people to your content-rich Web site. So SMM tools should be a hook. If you have a Twitter feed that doesn’t make people want to visit your site, then you are wasting your tweets. If you have a Fan page with no content, then the Facebook presence is worse than useless.
Let there be no question: Content is still king. The marketers (and entrepreneurs) smart enough to use SMM as a tool to redirect people more effectively to their Web presence are the ones who will profit, while those who think SMM is a trendy fad that breaks all the rules will inevitably crash and burn.
Tags: commerical content > content > Facebook > marketing > quality > SMM > social media > Twitter
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