Francis Moran & Associates — We bring technology to market

By Alexandra Reid

Update, May 24:

As you can see from the comments at the end of this post, people have suggested that the comments in this post attributed to Gary Vaynerchuk are not representative. In a Twitter conversation I had with Gary, he told me that the blog post on which I relied for this post misrepresented his presentation and certainly misrepresents his social media philosophy. I’ve invited Gary to weigh in here, and we certainly hope does. Please read this post in this context.

I read a blog post today that annoyed me, the content for which came from a presentation Gary Vaynerchuk gave to more than 600 small businesses and local chamber and association leaders at America’s Small Business Summit on Monday in Washington D.C. His said that small business owners must get on social media right away or else risk getting run over by the “wave” of innovation. It wasn’t his call to small business owners to get started on social media that raised my red flag. It was his sense of urgency, that small business owners should get on social media immediately without asking the right questions and laying out a sound strategy first. This is the ill-advised leap-before-you-look mentality that saps budgets and kills new marketing initiatives before they have had the chance to properly develop.

His advice?

• Don’t worry about what you’re going to say; just get started and build from there.
• Don’t focus on trying to win new customers, but instead on treating your existing customers well so you can keep them and inspire them to endorse your business.
• Don’t obsess about ROI. There’s a certain amount of serendipity in word-of-mouth marketing, and the numbers don’t always tell the full story.

I thought we had finally moved past this trial-and-error approach to social media, that all the content written on the importance of having a strategy and proving ROI had finally ushered in at least somewhat of a standard for social media operations among marketers.

Clearly, I was mistaken.

Flip this backwards advice 180 degrees and you’ll be heading in the right direction towards a successful social media marketing program. Care deeply about what you are going to say on social media and have a plan, focus your energies on winning new customers, and obsess over return on investment. Without a sound plan and proof that your activities are working and generating revenue, you could be throwing your money into a wasted effort with potentially damaging consequences to your brand.

To be fair, I understand that social media is still a relatively new area for marketers and while we have established best practices for our activities, many could still use improvement, especially in the ROI department. But I think we know enough by now by way of measurement to determine if a plan (if there is one that outlines clear goals) is on course for success. Small businesses don’t have large marketing budgets to waste and marketing, especially social media marketing which requires a long-term strategy, ain’t cheap. Every dollar must count. It is destructive to tell them that they shouldn’t worry about a content marketing strategy. It is unreasonable to tell them not to obsess over ROI. This is their livelihood we are talking about here. Social media is an investment. If they don’t hold their marketers accountable and see return for their dollars, which comes from attracting leads through their channels and converting them into new customers, they are going to be the ones who will have to suffer the consequences.

I want to think that Vaynerchuk, who is a high-profile social media marketer, was advising small business owners to relax and have fun with social media. If that is the case, I couldn’t agree more – social media is fun and marketing too heavily will push people away. But there is such a thing as too relaxed, especially when we are dealing with small budgets. Retaining existing customers and turning them into brand champions is also great advice, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of losing the focus of attracting new customers. It should also be noted that Vaynerchuk did have a fourth point, which was completely inarguable: Don’t ignore what people are saying on Twitter. It’s a great source of information about what consumers like, think and do.

As a brief disclaimer, I didn’t attend the summit and pulled this content from SmartBlog on Social Media, so if there are any clarifications, please do share them in the comment section below. I look forward to starting a discussion.

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