Imagine Your Reality

Some social media “experts” treat social media as the replacement of traditional marketing, arguing that companies need to forgo traditional marketing in favor of social media marketing. I think this is a mistake to make, especially given that many businesses are still reluctant to embrace and use social media because they feel it is too time consuming or too much of an information overload.

In order for social media to be accepted those businesses need to learn how it can be utilized in a timely manner, with effective strategies and processes for automating the activities that people do on the social media sites. At the same time, we must also acknowledge that just because something is old doesn’t mean that it no longer has value. In fact, if anything, sometimes a traditional approach can be more effective.

While I use social media to keep up with people and make new connections, a lot of my relationship building occurs in person. I also send cards to people as a way of thanking those people their business or their help. A card can be much more personal than a direct message on Twitter. At the same time, having a customer service rep on a social media site can be more effective immediate than trying to pick up a phone and wade the automated options designed to weed people out, as opposed to genuinely helping them.

Traditional media and marketing has its place in your marketing strategy and ideally what should occur is a complement of social media marketing with traditional marketing, using both to reach out to a diverse array of people who use different mediums to do research on their wants and needs. By combining traditional marketing with social media we can do more to reach out to people than just using one or another.

Social media isn’t the ultimate solution to marketing. It is just another form of marketing that can be as effective as traditional marketing. We shouldn’t discard traditional marketing out of hand, nor should we ignore social media for too long, as more and more people use it to do research on what they want and need.