“Marketing is not about selling stuff anymore”
Sometimes, changing the order of the factors do alter the product. Commutative property does not work when we talk about organization’s social media strategy. Forrester Research presents a four-step process that puts people first and leaves technology as the last question to be addressed. The methodology is called POST and it stands for People-Objectives-Strategy-Technology. In that order. Leaving People in the last position can turn a POST into a STOP.
Therefore, it is not enough to add social media to the marketing mix just because everyone else is doing it. The first thing to think about is who are the people you would most like to attract via your presence in sites like Facebook or Twitter. Then, what are your primary objectives and what kind of strategies you plant to implement. Eventually, you have to decide what technologies you are going to use. The methodology forgets to mention an important issue: you also need to know how are you going to measure your social media results. Business people still want to know the ROI of their results.
It all seems pretty obvious, but as the experts participating on SIME ‘Making the Marketing Click‘ session pointed out, many companies still think on selling stuff and forget what the customers want. “Marketing today is not about talking to people but about having conversations”, said Peder Rotkirch, from Join the Carnival. That entails a listening attitude but also bringing relevant content to the users, as Sebas Muriel, from Tuenti, underlined. Content is king. Provided it is appropriate and engaging. The spam sales pitches do not work anymore. So, let’s concentrate on POST.
