Why Social Media is So Hard for Marketers to Grasp

Beth Harte tweeted today about a comment made on Mac Collier's blog "The Viral Garden" that further demonstrated how some folks still don't get social media. I agree with her. However, here's why I think it is that social media is still so hard for some to grasp:

• Social media is about conversations. And conversations happen among people. Most marketing folks have a hard time getting over their institutional mentality. Can you smell the bureaucracy?
  

  "Okay, gang. Who is going to own the Twitter feed for Conglomerated Amalgamated? Should it be Global Marketing, North American Sales or Client Services?"

  "I think it should be Operations, since they have the most product knowledge."
  

  "Sounds good. What about headcount? Do we need to hire someone?"

  "I don't know. I heard heads were frozen until Q4."
  

  "They are, but we might be able to steal someone from Rob's group, and I can build a headcount into my budget when we sit down in September."

  "You know we're going to have to get Marketing involved somehow, because otherwise they'll be pissed if we don't adhere to their brand standards."
  

  "Okay, then how about Alicia on 2nd shift? She used to be in Marketing, and I know she sends a lot of text messages when she's outside having a smoke."

  "That could work. Okay. I'll talk to Rob about borrowing Alicia. Someone talk to Alicia to see if she's interested. I'll be meeting with Marketing next week, so I'll clear it with them. And we better talk to IT to make sure we can get Twitter across the firewall. Tom, do you want to do that?"
  

• Social media is about conversations. And conversations happen among people. That means no longer are companies shouting at the universe and calling it marketing. Instead, they are talking to individuals, and actually getting a response. They're ill prepared for dialogue coming at them; in their minds that only happens in a crisis, in which case they pony out their highly-paid well-polished spokesperson.


• Social media is about conversations. And conversations happen among people. That means companies have to be receptive to what other people have to say. Many companies don't want to hear from people unless they are going to buy something. Heaven forbid the customer ask for something they don't deliver and don't want to deliver. And what if the customer says something NEGATIVE? This frightens the hell out of most marketers, because they think the competition will use positive comments to improve their own products and negative comments to steal market share. It frightens the hell out of salespeople because they think any negative comment will make it harder for them to sell. It frightens the hell out of the C-level suite because they're generally control freaks, and they can't control what someone says on the other end of your social media feed.


• Social media is about conversations. And conversations happen among people. That means that the person actually typing on Twitter or Facebook may have to be trusted to use their brains--and not the company hymnal--when talking to someone. This frightens the hell out of attorneys who worry that Alicia may be exposing the company to liability by acknowledging a customer comment that the Widget 3000 doesn't actually spin straw into gold.

Why is social media so hard for marketers to grasp? Because social media is about conversations. And conversations happen among people.