Digithoughts

Earlier this week, Peter Shankman of HARO wrote a rather scathing article about so called “social media experts.” As someone who works in social media, I can’t endorse the way he writes off social as just another marketing tool, or how claims that people who work primarily in social media are hacks.

I hesitate to call myself an expert or any other word similar to that, not because I’m not confident in my knowledge of social, but because I refuse to say I’m an expert in an industry that is constantly changing. As soon as you think you know everything, you’re obsolete.

To say that social media is just a marketing tool both oversimplifies it and shows you don’t really understand its potential. A tweet is not the digital equivalent of a flier or coupon.  A Facebook page isn’t just a regurgitation of what’s on your website. Social media is not just used for revenue generation. Social is used for brand reputation and management, for recruiting and attracting talent, for helping establish brand identity and thought leadership.

Shankman also touches on social media’s use in customer service. But while he tried to discredit it, he’s paradoxically proving its value. Because of social media, brands are forced to be more transparent. One bad review won’t kill a brand, but a few can damage a brand’s reputation. But social also allows brands to monitor the conversation, fix problems and engage directly with their customers.

Take the “United Breaks Guitar” example Shankman gives. While I agree it was less about being a good use of social and more about how United reacted to the PR crisis, social media allowed them to address the situation quickly and publicly. To say that it was “knee-jerk crisis management that would never have had to happen had United been focused on customer service in their marketing to begin with,” is ridiculous and naive. Brands, companies, they mess up from time to time. Sometimes more. Holding a company to that standard of customer service excellence is not realistic and has nothing to do with their social media practices.

Shankman also doesn’t seem to think that “social media experts” believe in any kind of strategy. Based on his article, they simply set up Fan Pages and Twitter accounts and base their success on how many posts they can crank out in a day.  Anyone who does that is not only not a social media expert, but I highly doubt they’d last long in the industry. That is against pretty much every best practice established for social media.

Shankman’s comment about Barry Diller and connecting to your audience is an outdated view. Yes, in a world where we spend much of our days in front of a screen, face-to-face contact is important. We should pick up the phone and call people every once in a while. But to say reaching out via social media doesn’t count is absurd.  Shankman is basically saying that the person on the other end of an @reply doesn’t count as a real person. Now, having a lot of followers on Twitter is great, but who are they? Part of your strategy should be seeing who follows you and formulating a plan around your findings. Is it mostly industry professionals? Is it fans of your brand? I agree you need to know your audience and reach out, but social media is a great, measurable way to do so.

All Shankman succeeded in doing in this article is proving that social media is not something that everyone just “gets” and you need to hire someone who specializes in it to truly utilize social media to its full potential.

Oh and don’t be surprised if that person is in their 20s.

Reena Leone Marketing and Social Media Coordinator

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