Most folks know the story of Noah. How God warned him about an upcoming flood that would last for 40 days and 40 nights. To preserve nature, Noah took two of every animal onto his Ark in readiness for breeding once the storm had passed.
However, you could also look at it another way. If a cow died, Noah would still have had one cow left for beef and milk. He and his family wouldn’t starve, and they could come back to land and start afresh.
Moral of the story? Always have a back-up plan.
I’m not usually one to get too excited about buzz. Very often, buzz is simply over-hyping what can’t possibly hope to live up to the claims in reality (I still recall the PlayStation 2 real-time demos that turned out to be just highly crafted CGI).
But now and again I see something and I think, that’s a possibility. This video from Time, Inc and The Wonderfactory is one such example. And with the imminent release of Apple’s own tablet, the future may be closer than we think.
If this is what we have to look forward to, you can just start to imagine the possibilities. Marketers have a captive audience; advertisers can really get creative; non-profits can use images and media to connect emotionally while showing where the donations go. And that’s just for starters – the possibilities are endless.
How do you see something like this being used?
Almost as regular as Tila Tequila’s shameless self-promotion efforts, the question of blogging being dead keeps springing up. I’ve spoken about it before (my take – most definitely not dead) as have many others.
One of the best posts I’ve read about it, though, is by Grant Griffiths, where he takes “Steve Rubel and his cronies” to task about claims that are often contradictory.
It’s a great read, and the comments add some excellent insights. Check it out now, and be sure to leave your views in the comments too.
A new study by the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada comes up with some amazing facts:
Social media is free. Social media is inexpensive. You don’t have to outspend your competition. Social media saves time. Social media will save your business thousands, if not millions.
These are all quotes I’ve seen from various voices recently. Each one pretty much agrees with the other – that social media is a great tool for you to implement into your business because it’s so cost-effective and will give you quicker results.
Sadly, it’s not true.
Yes, you’ll save on equivalent costings from a traditional media advertising push. Yes, you can see instant results and measurable returns on your investment. But cheap and quick? Not quite. Particularly if you’re looking at implementing a strategy and social media campaign (and yes, social media purists, you can have a social media campaign).
Let’s say you have a new product or service. Let’s also say that you’ve seen competitors enjoy success using social media to launch a similar product or service. You know yours is better, so you know that social media (used properly) would further see you outshine your competitors. So, easy, right? You just set up a Facebook page, a Twitter account, maybe a video sharing channel and off you go.
Stop. Back up a little. Have you asked yourself the right questions before you start?
These are just some of the immediate questions you need to be asking before even starting. Getting the answers is going to take man hours. Lots of man hours. Multiply that by the payscale of the person/people doing that research and your costs are already starting.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re coordinating a social media campaign internally or externally, you’re going to have to allocate budget to it. This includes costs for strategy, community management, mobile app and moderation/maintenance. Let’s see how that might pan out (based on a 12-month campaign and with earnings based on survey results).
Now I’ve given you worst-case scenarios, since you probably won’t need a social media strategist for the whole time during the campaign. You might only need a community manager half the time mentioned above. You can also build micro-sites for less; the cost will depend on how interactive you want the site to be.
But even if you halve the total cost used in my example above, you’re still looking at $195,300. Almost $200,000 for a year-long social media campaign.
Compare that to a print ad that may cost anywhere between $50,000 and $100,000 for one run, and yes, it’s clear that social media offers a comparably cost-effective solution. But to say that it’s cheap and quick? That’s setting you up for a flawed approach from the start and will only bite you in the long run.
How about you? How expensive (or inexpensive) have you found social media, both from a financial and time management angle? I’d love to hear your experiences.
