Jan
19
Why businesses think Social Media is a waste of time!
January 19, 2010 | 8 Comments
Today I was reading an article on Brand Republic about the shortage of social media and SEO knowledge and skills amongst marketing and PR professionals. Even I was surprised at how low the statistics were:
Gordon Macmillan writes “Out of a sample of 4500 CVs received in the last two years it says just 6% reference “Social Media”, 9% mention Twitter, and a meagre 2% talk about blogging, while 13% include Facebook (though in some this was merely highlighted in the ‘interests’ section).”
What I can’t decide is whether the reason for this is based on a stigma in some companies/organisations and industries regarding social media or if there is really a shortage. There are millions of blogs out there, millions use twitter and even more are on Facebook. The title of this article is based on a comment to the mentioned article rather than the article itself.
What I found shocking was the first comment to this article. A business owner calling social media a distraction that takes people away from adding value to a business. He is rather degrading about social media and clearly advises people to keep it off their CV if they want to get employed.
My first thoughts were here is a guy who has no clue about how to use social media for his business to create value from it. Who doesn’t understand that you need a strategy and clear objectives which should be measured. That he sounds old fashioned and not keeping up to date with technology and trends. If he had said he had tested and turned to expert advice to ensure best results and that it clearly added no value for his business, I may have been okay with his answer. But, such a general statement…
The next answer from an avid social media user mildly disagreeing and recommending people add it to their interest section rather than their skills on their CV; led me to think that there must be a stigma attached. For me that thought is also rather shocking. It would suggest that a large portion of businesses have this view of social media. This was certainly not my perspective as I was of the opinion that social media was gaining acceptance and ever increasingly being included in marketing budgets.
To me it would seem that people only include it for positions requiring social media experience and knowledge and leave it off if not mentioned. It seems that social media is perceived as non-productive socialising and in some cases this is probably true. However, having a clear policy about social media along with a strategy would go a long way to change this.
After all if people want to be non-productive, they can do this using their mobile/cell phones to text/sms, browse the internet and use social networks, as well as email both at work and on their phones.
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There’s definitely huge value with social media — superb blogs providing superior intelligence on any number of topics, absurdly precise demographic ad-targeting with Facebook, a large follower potential with Twitter regardless of one’s niche.
But, in big businesses defense, getting up to speed on social media requires one to wade through an ocean of unfamiliar terms and strategies and invest time and resources with multiple toddler-aged SM companies with strange names/ no profit/little in the way of track record.
I think eventually, the strategic case for social media will be made to big business in a familiar format: lots of big business cases demonstrating how social media lead to great financial, political and entertainment success.
So, in my opinion, give it 5–8 years and you’ll see big business go from reluctant to engage with social media to having a practically institutionalized command of it.
Great post! I must confess I’m probably in the didn’t know much about SMM until 6 months ago category. Yes, I’ve had FB and Twitter accounts for a couple of years, and I’ve also had a LinkedIn profile for 6 years, but I never considered the marketing aspects behind these mediums. Now academia has also caught on and are offering both undergrad and graduate degrees in Internet & Social Media Marketing. Who knew?
Hi Laura
Thanks for your comments
.
I agree with you debates make blogging interesting and helps us to understand other peoples view points and the problems they face.
Great article! Interesting debate. These kinds of debates make blogging interesting, don’t you think? If everyone agrees with everyone it makes for boring reading.
I think the problem here is the social media is still kind of new. The “stigma” is due to ignorance.
It took me a while to get into the whole new “internet” thing when that first came out. And I remember a friend begging me to get a cell phone so that we could talk. Oops, I guess I just announced how old I am…
And some people do misuse social media, I’m sure. Playing application games on Facebook at work (and forgetting to turn off the updating feature on their profile. Oops, two dozen notices about “Farmville” is pretty embarrassing).
Still, I’m pretty sure most people see the benefits of social media and recognize its value.
Thank you for your article and for bringing this discussion to my attention!
I think you have a good point Lawrence and I think that type of attitude shows a company ill prepared for younger generations and more modern ways of running a business. By that I do not mean neglecting the point of business i.e. profit (in most cases) but rather getting the best out of people.
Lee:
The “shortfall” is probably due to the relative new awareness of traditional marketing and PR firms to the existence and power of social media–it’s one of those things that seemingly came out of nowhere and caught a number of people by surprise. So now these traditional firms are scrambling to fine people to help them because their clients are asking “How can we use this new hot medium”?
As for the antediluvian attitudes of the first responder to post–well, it’s that kind of dinosaur-like, “my way or the highway”, “you’re here to work, nose to the grindstone, shoulder-to-the-wheel, not play or have fun” that encouraged me to work for myself!
Thanks for that link Eric.
Those results are certainly interesting and a bit surprising. Though when I think about it, the fact that having individual contacts in B2B is really important where mass communication is possibly more important in B2C, it makes sense.
If you look at the advertising figure on SSM it shows this, however the difference is not as wide as I would expect.
Thanks for posting this — a really interesting perspective. I think that Social Media Marketing (SMM) is new enough, that I suspect there is a real dearth of experienced people, looking for a job. No shortage of snake-oil consultants, of course — no, there are plenty of so-called experts for both SMM and SEO, but most of these people didn’t even know how to spell the terms 6 months ago. No, I think there are very few people who are well-versed in SEO and SMM techniques, who are actively looking for a job as opposed to consulting in the field. In our client organizations, I would be lynched if I were seen talking to one of their SMM experts — my guess is the good ones are cosseted and well-fed and thus not looking for another job.
By the way,you may be interested in a very revealing survey which was conducted by Business.com, which compared SMM activity in B2B versus B2C companies. The results were surprising to say the least:
http://bit.ly/4Jblxn
The reason I give the link here, apart from sharing the results, is that they show that the problem you cite — a disparaging view of SMM — is not common and could well be the opinion of this one person.