The first rule of Social Media is that you don’t talk about Social Media

A lot has been said about social media over the past 5 years and it is still one of the most popular topics in the marketing world. From expressions of doubts of usefulness and concerns about privacy to massive adoption of the “new conversation platform” and fanatics about the “social media revolution”. From “how to pimp your Facebook Page” and get tens of thousands of fans to success stories of brands increasing and monetizing their customers’ engagement through record sales on Facebook.

With all the hype about social media year over year, and while organisations are still grappling with the phenomenon and trying to find a way to leverage and monetize it, I find it sobering to be able to have a few rules around the evolution of the connected world into a social Web, linked through ever evolving social and mobile networks.

So I propose a first rule for the science of social media marketing, purposely meant to be counter intuitive and make us pause for a second and realised that this mystic, even though very impactful and somewhat complex, shouldn’t be the main focus of an organisations marketing efforts.

The first rule of Social Media is that you don’t talk about Social Media.

Meeting after meeting, presentation after presentation, there is a lot of focus on social media marketing and understanding its arcane to take advantage of it.

To be clear, social media, in my opinion, is an extraordinary distribution channel with an embedded feedback loop. So yes it’s a super channel, a social channel with an exponential adoption rate. Nevertheless, it’s just a channel. And at the end of the day, it’s just technology.

Talking about social media for me is like talking about technical infrastructure: the wires, the links, the triggers, and capacity of a distribution system. With this view of what social media is, it’s hard for me to remain excited about it and hence I need to manage my clients’ expectations about my take on the topic.

And my response to the matter is a dramatic change in focus.
Client: Stephane, what do you think about social media?
Stephane: I’d rather not talk about social media.
Client: Really! Why?
Stephane: I think we have other issues to talk about first.

Usually my concerns, when it comes to social media are:
1. How does an organisation perform in the most financially rewarding marketing tactics such as Search Engine marketing for customer acquisition, Email marketing for customer retention, and Loyalty program for database and sales development?

2. What is an organisation’s story line expressed through a strong content strategy mixing editorial and promotional tactics? In other words, how is an organisation becoming a media of its own to reach and maintain the relationship with customers?

3. What is an organisation’s ability to execute on integrating #1 and on publishing #2 through a multi channel (online and off line) distribution system and how is it measuring and improving its performance?

In other words, is an organisation already taking advantage of the proven and most financially rewarding digital marketing tactics? Does it know what to say to its customers to engage them through a range of channels depending on where the customer is (home, work, traveling, on the go, etc.) and what she is doing (working, shopping, relaxing, planning, etc.)? And does it have the right operations to ramp up its efforts to evolve and adapt its strategy in a world interacting more and more through connected and mobile devices?

If the answer is “yes we do it all” to all the above, then I’m pretty sure that this organisation already has a pretty good idea on how to manage social media. And so we don’t talk about social media. Unless we’re required to innovate or push the envelope, which is a totally different conversation.

If the answer is “no we’re struggling” to any of the above, then the focus is on planning and executing, and social media is a topic among others and finds its usefulness as a conduct for distributing content and interacting with customers.

What’s your take on this suggested first rule of social media?