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Waging War Against Social Media Purists

I had the pleasure of attending July’s sold out Social Media Club Seattle featuring the always entertaining Jason Falls. (Thanks to Eric Berto for getting me on the list.) Last time I ran into Jason was at SXSW and oddly enough I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing Jason speak. The topic of Jason’s presentation was tax law and SarbOx compliance.

I’m kidding of course. Instead Jason Falls decided to wage war against the social media purists.

I will make the qualifying statement that this is really my interpretation of  Jason’s presentation so I’m probably getting some stuff wrong.

Move The Needle: Social Media For The Bottom Line

  • Social Media is not a World of Happy Little Trees
  • Social media by itself doesn’t ring the cash register.
  • Your job is to move the needle.

I will now share with you a bunch of random tweetable talking points from Jason’s presentation:

Example: Eric Brown of Urbane Apartments started letting the tenants blog. They blogged about the neighborhood and he started renting more apartments.

  • Social Media Purists don’t move the needle.
  • Joining the conversation, talking with us not at us, engagement only takes the ball half way.
  • Those are important things to do but you still have to move the needle.
  • 81% of marketers plan to link annual revenues to social media.
  • Traditional marketing (advertising, direct marketing, email marketing) still works, if it’s relevant.
  • You can sell through social media.
  • But remember soft metrics have merit. Branding and awareness has value. Traffic, comments, friends, etc, etc. They give you a metric of success but in and of themselves they don’t equate to ROI.

Most people who ask the ROI question are asking out of fear because they don’t understand what it does. Remember what it does do:

  • Aides in branding and awareness
  • Builds community
  • Provides customer service opp
  • Allows for research development collaboration
  • Protects company’s reputation
  • Offers direct sales opportunities

But despite all the huffing and puffing Jason still advocates to -  Be a Purists:

  • Be customer centric
  • Participate
  • Provide value
  • Build relationships and trust.

How do we do that?

  • Plan for Success
  • Establish singular goals.
  • Set measurable objectives goals to achieve
  • Then tactics

Q&A

What’s the best tool for measuring the ROI of social media? Your brain. No one can measure your ROI if they don’t know the objectives and the strategy of your business.

What’s the biggest mistake people make in social media? Not doing anything with the community that they have built.

Bonus: Jason’s example of what will happen to social media gurus


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About Tac

Social media anthropologist. Communications strategist. Business model junkie. Chief blogger here at New Comm Biz.

  • http://topsy.com/www.newcommbiz.com/waging-war-against-social-media-purists/?utm_source=pingback&utm_campaign=L2 Tweets that mention Waging War Against Social Media Purists | New Comm Biz — Topsy.com

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tac Anderson, Angela LoSasso, Craig M. Jamieson, theartofstorytelling, Rich Taylor and others. Rich Taylor said: Preach RT @tacanderson: Waging War Against Social Media Purists http://bit.ly/aet7wy (new post) [...]

  • UrbaneWay

    Tac, good Morning,
    Thanks for the mention of Urbane Apartments, we appreciate it. And thanks to Jason for the Shout Out!

  • http://twitter.com/Genuine Jim Turner

    Jason rocks and this is indicative of that reason. I always like his no nonsense approach and as a PR/Marketer he is never quite what you expect. Thanks for the recap! I need to get up there to Seattle again soon and if so will see you and Eric soon!

  • http://twitter.com/JenHarris09 Jennifer Harris

    I consider myself a SM purist that gets, understands and knows how to report ROI to increase the bottom line. I love talking about SM like it is one big tree huggin' love fest - but it is about keeping the company in the black & making money. ROI ROI ROI - but you won't get there without strategy - a key that most SMM peeps don't do (or they just mimic the one they did for their radio advertisers).
    cheers!
    -jen
    @JenHarris09

  • http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

    Thanks for the comment and thanks for creating the great example Jason was able to share. Good stuff.

  • http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

    You got to love someone who isn't afraid to call “bull-shit.” Which he did in his best Louisville accent :)

    If you want to come to Seattle, there's no better excuse than Gnomedex. http://gnomedex.com/

  • http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

    The fact I'm learning Jen is most marketers don't have a social media strategy because they don't have a marketing strategy. They just do what everyone else does and rely on mediocre results to get them through. That doesn't cut it anymore.

    <steps off soap box>

    Thanks for the comment and keep hugging those trees :)

  • http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/2010/07/30/thoughts-on-community-particularly-seattles/ Seattle’s Social Media Community Rocks

    [...] is online at UStream.There are some great pictures of the SMC Seattle Event taken by Berto here. Tac Anderson recaps my talk on his blog as well. And I uploaded my snapshots from the trip to [...]

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