Social Media Hot Tub

Your Brand Cannot Survive on Buzz Alone

A lot of “gurus” would like to tell you the best case scenario. Social media is free, powerful and fun. I couldn’t agree more.

However, it’s not a panacea. It’s not the only ingredient in your marketing apothecary, is it? I certainly hope not. Think of it like an insurance portfolio. You don’t just get one type then say forget it. There’s health, life, auto… Missing one coverage could be disastrous. But that’s between you and your agent to figure out – and in life as in marketing, disasters can be instructive.

In addition to my social media warrior princess gig, I also do some newspaper writing and editing. Recently I had to talk down a reporter who had gotten himself into a sticky place with his editorial subject. His report was just that – a report – and needed some serious reworking. My 11th hour rewrite for the paper didn’t please the freelancer, who had promised his contact a certain tone to his story.

Note to freelancers: Do NOT do this. Your editor will ultimately determine the tone in keeping with his or her editorial guidelines and the publication’s journalistic integrity. Your job stops at submission.

But that’s not my point to this piece. Wait for it…

The reporter’s subject is a marketer who’s brought an ultrapremium luxury item to market and…drum roll…left it to social media buzz to get the word out.

Here’s the truth: leaving it to social media followers to do your marketing for you means you lose a substantial amount of control over your message.

Balancing buzz with other marketing components will help insure your message.

So my advice to that freelancer: If he wants to write what the marketing company behind the product wants him to write, then he’s not a journalist, but a copywriter who has limited input into the creative vision.

My advice to his contact: When you “go viral,” you’re capitalizing on buzz at that point, not necessarily a commitment to product quality.You CAN have both, but that requires careful engineering and concerted marketing portfolio management.

It does strike me as a sort of dark genius on the subject’s part to squeeze all the blood out of his particular social media turnip, then cop a “poor me” attitude with the press. You want profile, you get profile.

Remember “the medium is the message?” This mantra was beaten into me as a young ad copywriter fresh out of college. It was true when Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964. Is it as true today as it was then? How does it apply to new media platforms?

By the way, if anyone tries to pass him or herself off as a “guru,” take a good, hard look at the expertise they’re actually bringing to the table. You want substantial marketing chops, not a yogic hermit in a mountaintop cave – unless you’re the Beatles, in which case you probably don’t have to worry much about your buzz.