Social media is like…

By Alex Hillman on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 in business, Community with 4 Comments

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Via http://zygote.egg-co.com/social-media-roi/

I snagged this slide from one of the most valuable presentations about social media I’ve read online. Read it. Right now. It’s long-ish, but worth it. Thanks to Dave McClure for sharing it.

Here’s the deal: teaching people how to tweet on twitter.com, blog on blogger.com, or belch on belcher.com, makes not an effective social media campaign.

There is no silver bullet.

You need to evaluate business problems.

You have to know the right solutions to solve those problems, relevantly to the business in question.

And you need to design and execute against metrics to measure the success of your decisions.

It’s not simple. It’s not quick.

Which is why I find it so hard to believe how many “social media experts” are out there.

My sincere hope it that people read at this really well constructed deck and presentation content, and take it to heart, and put their “social media consultant” cards in a drawer for a day when you actually can provide value to the people paying them money. (And maybe use those spare “SEO consultant” cards you’ve got laying around in the mean time so you don’t have to waste money on new ones).

  • http://drinkingoatmealstout.com Justin Thorp

    Amen brother.

  • http://www.marketwire.com colby

    Good post Justin, could not agree more with the amount of people w/the “Social Media Expert” label running around. Hard to be an expert of something that is constantly evolving.

  • Laurel Papworth

    as someone who has been working in virtual communities, online communities and social networks (depends which decade) since the late ’80s, i don’t find too many surprises in businesses regarding consumer communications strategies. I have a course I’ve been teaching and updating for a few years now on establishing baseline metrics in user engagement online (social media marketing analytics in today’s speak). I’m thinking of putting it up as opensource courseware cos frankly, I do agree with one thing – too many “experts” say SM can’t be measured when it so clearly can.

  • http://www.dangerouslyawesome.com Alex Hillman

    Laurel, I’d love to see that courseware! Be sure to share that my way when you do post it.

    -Alex