Too Much of a Good Thing?

Anthony Juliano wrote this:

Social Networking: The “Hot Pocket” of Marketing?

Business Week’s Gene Marks says that “for many business owners, social networking is as valuable as a Hot Pocket is nutritious.” So it’s no surprise that he believes there are several social media marketing “myths”. A sample:

“Some of these cool and trendy sites aren’t going to be so cool and trendy in the near future. The percentage of Twitter users in a given month who return the following month has languished below 30% for most of the past year...And MySpace recently suffered a decline in monthly visitor traffic. Remember GeoCities? Yahoo...is shutting it down. A lot of business owners aren’t thrilled about committing time and resources to a vanishing trend.”

But before you dismiss Marks as a naysayer, read between the lines in his column. In addition to serving as a wake-up call to anyone who has fallen a little too in love with social media, it also includes some nice nuggets of wisdom about social media’s greatest strengths:

“[S]ocial communities are not for marketing. They’re for service. [They allow companies] to get closer to...customers and respond to their needs.”

So while Hot Pockets might not be the most nutritious food out there, they still can fill you up. You just need make them a small part of your diet, not eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

--Anthony J.

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