What does it take to get fans?

There is an ongoing discussion about the value of social media marketing. How do you go about it in the most efficient manor? What is the ROI, and how do you measure it? And does social media marketing really matter at all.

Some, like Nate Elliott of Jupiter Research, seem to believe that unless marketeers get their acts together, social media marketing will die. I agree with the part of getting their acts together, but I don’t think social media marketing as such will die. It’s just a matter of looking at what it fundamentally is all about.

I see three major issues with social media marketing today:

First of all many marketeers seem to think that their products and brands have so much character that people just develop fanlike behaviour out of the blue. So not true for all but very few almost iconic brands (take Apple as a brillant example). It’s just to hard - and really not worthwhile - to develop a relationship with a product. Think about it. Relationships are for people!

This brings me to my second point: Personality. In a time where especially young people talk about trusting their friends more than brands, I would start looking more towards adding personality to my brand. Get a spokesperson, a celebrity…whatever. Albeit an honest one that you can really relate to. Build your profile around that person and use case like scenarios with the products and brands in question and let that be the basis of what you do. Provide people with all kinds of opportunities to engage in an active way with that. People are just so much easier to relate to and engage with.

Finally, redefine ROI. Why insist on using tools from the industrial consumer age in an age where it’s getting more and more social, and where people have been blessed with the tools to bypass traditional corporate messaging, if they really want to? Why not look at relationships and strenght of relationships instead of sales conversion as the basis of your success criteria? Not so say that the latter should go away, but put it into a context where it fits the reality of the web as your market place.