For the purposes of marketing to consumers, social networks are…
- Impersonal
- Unnatural
- Awkward (Would you buy an HDTV based on a Facebook ad?)
- Still too technical for the mainstream (I’m talking about anything beyond Facebook)
- Ineffective
- Far from the best way to communicate with consumers (I can think of 10 better ways right now)
- Getting far too much focus and investment from marketers and public relations departments
- Not the next great consumer marketing vehicle
- Possibly on the downside of their most successful, effective days
- Quite possibly headed the way of the Internet connected refrigerator
Other than that — I love consumer marketing on social networks!
you obviously don’t understand the difference between “selling”
and “participation”….. otherwise I couldn’t disagree more with your very narrow take on social involvement.
Thanks for your comment, Patrick. I understand precisely the difference between selling and participation. More to the point, I understand the difference between consumer marketing and social network participation. Problem is, most companies are spending too much time doing the wrong one. Participation is nebulous, without direction, and generally ineffective at convincing consumers your products are excellent. Effective marketing, on the other hand, teaches people how their lives will be improved if they buy a product. If companies marketed more and participated less, they’d sell a lot more products to consumers.