image credit: Helga Birna Jónasdóttir
I’m talking to you, young, hip, fancy social media blogger/guru/maven. You get engagement, community management, and customer interaction.
At least that’s what the young pro blogs I’m reading suggest.
But what about the unsexy stuff?
Do you know your cost of new customer acquisition?
Could you spout off five easy ways to increase average order size?
Can you read a P&L statement?
Can you quickly and easily demonstrate social media’s value to the bottom line?
How are you at using market research data to predict consumer behavior?
Consider this my formal and open call.
It’s my opinion that if we really want to advance how social media is used in business, we must first demonstrate how it contributes to revenue.
We also have to acknowledge that traditional models of marketing and customer interaction still work in many cases, and talk about how the new works with the old.
Maybe I’m being unreasonable.
But it seems to me that for as much time as we spend talking about all things social (“we” meaning likely readers of this post, myself included), we spend next to no time talking about new approaches to nuts and bolts stuff. Not just measurement, but integrated approaches with traditional business functions.
Perhaps that’s why Oliver Blanchard told us to “Beware the Social Media one-trick-pony“:
An individual with “extensive” Social Media experience…cannot function at the Director level without prior experience at that level outside of “Social Media.” Your knowledge of the function of a department…takes precedence over your knowledge of Social Media.
And maybe it’s why A few weeks ago, David Spinks argued that too much networking makes bad marketers:
We’re just starting out, and the first thing we now learn isn’t to start studying people and marketing, it’s to use social media to network and build a personal brand.
We should do instead
In treating social media like the the center of the universe, it’s my belief that we’ve narrowed our focus too much.
Instead of spending all of our time thinking and writing about building community or getting more blog readers, perhaps our careers and our conversations would be better served if we focused more on calculated business principles.
Mark Schaefer suggested that if you want to get a job in social media marketing,
Become a beefy marketer. [...] to really build a career you should become proficient at the fundamentals of marketing. Star performers will be able to apply their love of the social web to marketing research, consumer behavior, product development, personal selling, and brand-building.
The point I’m getting from these conversations?
Stop doing the same social media trick all the time and widen your skill base.
I think one of the best ways to wrestle with the new application of business basics is together, through conversation across blogs and platforms like Twitter.
So here’s to learning new tricks
And talking about them, too.
What do you think? Do young pro bloggers have a responsibilty (for the sake of our own careers) to push beyond social and life talk? Please share your thoughts.
-Andrew
Image credit: Helgabj on Ficker; see original for copyright info
