Social media marketing is a very powerful tool. Nonetheless, there are still people about who can be dismissive of it. This small minority may not have much influence, but it is worth listening to some of their arguments. Linguist and famous public intellectual Noam Chomsky has argued that the communication enabled by the social media is shallow and has little lasting impact. Those involved in devising marketing campaigns may not agree with his comments, but a good campaign can rebut them in a practical way.
At Searchengineoptimisation.co.uk we devise and implement campaigns which work well on diverse fronts. Each campaign is site-specific and multifaceted. Due to the fact that the campaign is aimed at the wants and needs of the target audience, the content is kept rich and relevant.
Different types of communication should not be set up against one another in a hierarchy. Their diversity should simply be appreciated. An advertising campaign in a newspaper is not the same as a Twitter campaign, for example. However, it is amazing what can be packed into 140 characters. Furthermore, blog content can be flagged up via a tweet. It is worth noting that conventional newspapers have been struggling while social networking sites have largely been going from strength to strength.
It can be seen by regular users that Twitter is not nearly as superficial or trivial as its detractors may suggest. However, it may be that a segment of a target audience is reluctant to engage with Twitter. It may be that they have loyalty to Facebook. Some Facebook users are reluctant to engage with other social media networking sites. On the other hand, it could be that they are not yet fully won over by the social networks taken as a whole.
Scepticism with regard to the social networks typically takes one of three forms. The elitist rejection of them has been mentioned already. The second form involves ridiculing those who use them for comic effect. The final one is based on privacy concerns. The jokes actually add to brand awareness and are insignificant. Of course, the privacy issue is more serious. Nonetheless, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ all address privacy worries in their improvements to their services.
Hence the scepticism with regard to ‘the social’ cannot be ignored. It actually has a concrete impact on the work which is done by the big players and which needs doing by others. However, it is only the privacy concern which seems likely to be of great relevance as time progresses. The basic fact that Facebook has 800 million active users means that much of the publicly expressed scepticism is having little effect.
Nevertheless, the use of low quality content can add fuel to the arguments of the sceptics. Content must be produced which undercuts the comments of elitists and humorists alike. Indeed, if the content is very good then it can even persuade users to care less about their anxieties with regard to privacy. All those who manufacture and distribute high quality content are invalidating the arguments of the sceptics on a daily basis.