Social Media will Save Us All

Twitter has lied to us. Well maybe not directly, but the idea of Twitter has given us a false hope. Some people in the ad world would have us believe that social media will save us all. I just don’t see that happening. Brand managers want to believe that the world is taking to their Twitter and Facebook accounts to discuss how awesome their dish soap is. I haven’t seen dish soap as a trending topic and it hasn’t shown up on my wall either.

So what good social media anyway? A lot of very smart people are trying to figure out how social media fits into a media plan, or how it can add value to an existing campaign. Unfortunately the answers that have developed so far have been thinly disguised spam, or overtly pitch heavy posts. I venture the opinion that social media shouldn’t be treated like a cure-all ointment for marketing.

There have been successful uses of social media recently. Best Buy’s use of Twitter as a global help desk is a great example. That is an innovative idea and a useful application of social media. However, I do wonder what happens when a person’s computer crashes and he tries to Tweet Best Buy about it.

Brands have been lured by social media’s shinyness. They see subscription numbers and assume those numbers belong to potential customers. But that’s like putting a debit card kiosk in the middle of a crowd and expecting everyone to use it. Social media still needs content. Content that people actually want.

So social media isn’t the savior of the world. It’s the hero of the backyard bar-b-queue. For some clients it fits logically and comfortably in their existing brand. Companies that attempt to move their brand to be more “social” are making a huge mistake. Because if social media is anything it’s change. Next year Facebook could be the next Myspace, Twitter the next WinAmp. Nothing stays the same. Everything changes. And that’s the hook we hang our hats on.