Recently I enjoyed a great conversation with Tom Cunniff on Twitter. It revolved around social media definitions and how brands and voices could be heard across the sphere. I was so intrigued by Tom’s views I asked if he’d guest here. I’m thankful he said yes.
People talk about Social Media as if it’s one thing. This is the source of a lot of “you-just-don’t-get-it” arguments online: people fight holy wars to defend their “it” vs. someone else’s “it” and never see that two sides can never agree because they’re not talking about the same thing.
I don’t think Social Media is one thing. I believe it can be more accurately described as a continuum, with “Social” at the far left and “Media” at the far right.
On the “Social” side of the continuum, it’s all about the conversation. So, let’s start there.
THE SOCIAL SIDE OF THE CONTINUUM
For small businesses – especially consultancies — Social Media is 99% social and maybe 1% paid media. In fact, there are so many conversations going on that some people need assistants to help them manage all those conversations at once. This is the world of Twitter and Facebook and FriendFeed: a very human, very time-consuming world.
Social Media works brilliantly for consultancies because these are and always have been relationship businesses. Start with light conversation, spread some thought leadership, and build a few important business relationships.
The intimacy of scale matches the intimacy of the sale.
Because it works so incredibly well for small businesses, a lot of social media experts seem incredulous when you ask whether social media can scale. Surely if a tiny business can have huge results with social media, a big business would surely have even bigger results, right? Are big clients insane? Why aren’t they all over this? I mean, duh!
Well… not so fast. The physics out here in big-bizland are dramatically different. So much so, in fact, that the time investment can balloon out of control while the payback shrinks so small that you can’t measure it.
THE MEDIA SIDE OF THE CONTINUUM
Large product businesses can’t survive selling to dozens of people per year. If you’re a consumer packaged goods manufacturer (think Crest toothpaste), you need to sell to millions of people, and you have to do it fast because you have to drive fast product turns at Wal-Mart.
A dozen conversations won’t cut it. A hundred won’t do it either. Even thousands of conversations won’t do it. You literally need millions of conversations and you need them fast.
Here’s the point where everyone trots out the “influencing the influencers” argument: win over a few key influencers and the rest follow. In some extremely high-involvement categories, this may work. But in low-involvement categories, I don’t see it. Imagine you work for Charmin bathroom tissue. Who are the key influencers for toilet paper? You get the idea.
So if you work for a CPG (consumer packaged goods) company, it starts to be necessary to consider buying Social Media at scale. But once you start looking at that, it rapidly turns into 99% media and maybe 1% social. Why? Because one of the only ways to get massive scale is to buy space next to somebody else’s conversation. This is the stuff we used to call “advertising” back in the day.
To understand why, you need to understand the currency.
WHAT’S THE CURRENCY OF SOCIAL MEDIA?
The currency of social media is a human conversation. Those one-on-one conversations don’t scale well. A million very shallow conversations would require 10 million individual, costly, well-trained human minutes. This goes double (quadruple, actually) if there are regulatory or safety issues.
Another hurdle: the intimacy of the medium requires a slower pace. Jumping right into a sales pitch is seen as a violation of trust. And automation is problematic, because people feel (correctly) like they’re talking to a robot.
WHERE ARE YOU ON THE CONTINUUM?
What do you think about this continuum idea? Is it consistent with what you’re already thinking, or do you find it challenging? If you buy the idea of a continuum, where do you think you can offer the most value? Where do you offer the least value? Who does the social side best? Who does the media side best?
I’m curious to hear your comments.
- Tom Cunniff has been an ad agency creative director, an interactive agency owner, and is now on the client side. “The more perspective I get,” Tom says, “the more I appreciate the scope of what’s still left to learn”. You can find out more about him by reading his blog or connecting with Tom on Twitter.
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Great article! Explains very well the breadth and width of social media.
I own my own small business – and it’s a referral business. Social media was made for people like me. I’m all about the conversation. I acquire clients by talking to them, developing trust and helping them acheive their goals.
The biggest social media obstacle for me is in choosing which avenues I want to pursue. I just don’t have time for all of them!
Thanks,
@debworks
I think in any business it’s always been word-of-mouth that can essentially make or break you. From personal word-of-mouth to bad reviews in papers or trade magazines. The difference now is that a bad review is instantly worldwide and harder to shake. But get it right and it’ll spread just as far.
I think the biggest challenge for volume products/brands is to work creatively with an integrated media plan. Now, it may not make sense to have a community built around a toilet paper brand, but there are plenty of other ways to create sustainable conversations around such products.
The whole point around scaling is not that you need a fleet of people responding to one-on-one conversations, but that you build brand advocacy and empowerment through social media. It’s not about the influencers but about the advocates.
That’s a good point you make, Gavin. Influencers will only get you so far and if the product sucks, they won’t want to tarnish their reputation anyway (unless they’re really just money grabbers).
If I see one person talking about something, it may be that he or she has some level of power, so I may check it out. Then again, I may not.
But if I see a lot of people that I relate to talking about something, I will definitely check it out. To me, that’s real influence right there – the trust of my friends as opposed to someone I don’t know.
As a social media novice, I don’t know where I am on the continuum. What I do know, however, is that there are few people who bring the perspective, logic and insight to the subject that Tom does. There are plenty of so-called experts, often with their own agenda, but Tom’s clear-sighted point of view is informed by his unique and broad experience. Nice work again, Tom.
RR @freshpie
Agreed, and one of the reasons I’m delighted he allowed me his time.
I think this is a great distinction to make. Sometimes we hear talk about Social Media with a capital S and capital M as if it is a one-stop answer for everyone, a new source of free advertising. But there is a great difference between the range of applications.
While freelancers and small business owners can broadcast a message and start a conversation easier and cheaper than ever before, big companies don’t necessarily care about putting money into things and may need an audience in the tens of millions, not tens of thousands. The toilet paper company is a great example, where a big company selling mass products to a mass audience wouldn’t be helped by that kind of thing.
But, you had a great point Danny about the bad word of mouth that can spread so easily now. Even a large company can fall victim to this if they are not monitoring the conversations that ARE happening. I think the other side to that is that in that case, they get a unique chance to respond directly and engage customers on a personal level. Done correctly, it can help turn that conversation around by talking to the customer on a personal level.
A series of bad reviews years ago followed by a press release to answer the charges just doesn’t have the same impact.
It’s all about tailoring your approach. We’ve used market research for years to great effect – why would that stop because of a new business tool? Until that one-size-fits-all approach is proven as being successful (which I’m doubtful of) then we can’t pigeonhole everyone into the same categories.
You wouldn’t put mashed potatoes, jelly, chocolate and raw beef on the same dinner plate. So why do we expect that different mixes will be useful under one banner?
Absolutely agree, Danny. Although I have to admit I like a good mashed potatoes, jelly, chocolate and raw beef sandwich once in a while.
I have continued to think about this post after leaving my initial comment and had to write out some ideas of my own. Too much to fit here. If you’re interested, you can see my post here: The Spectrum and Spiral of Social Media. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Social Media is a continuum, with “Social” at the far left and “Media” at the far right.
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