Allow me to use Rocky’s words for my opening statement. “Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows.”

In the digital realm where magic happens, its easy to be tricked into believing it is all sunshine and rainbows, and not only that, but also FREE sunshine and rainbows.

Allow me to elaborate:

We don’t need fancy cameras to create a decent snapshot, and we don’t need thousands of dollars to create a video. We don’t need the newspapers for a statement to be announced, and we sure don’t need (exclusively) any main-stream media in order to build a brand.

That is why on this day and age, anyone with an iPhone claims to be an artist, and anyone with a Facebook account calls themselves a Community Manager. It seems to be that anyone that knows a thing or two about uploading a post, and adding a filter on Instagram feels they’re ready to step in the ring and defeat Ivan Drago (I couldn’t resist using a Rocky reference) on the Marketing / Social Media arena.

In terms of a price war, managers can feel good on the short run thinking that since they hired someone cheap, they’ve saved their company money. After all, who can say they’re not up for a good deal, right?

But is it really a good deal?

Will a $10 expenditure ever beat a $50 investment? At a 5:1 ratio (or any ratio for that matter), it’s often a challenge to convince SMB’s business owners to “open the wallet” and go for option B.

These are some of the things we’ve heard in our years at Moma Consulting:

1) Social Media has been falsely accused of being a money drain

It can be, and it sure will be if you settle for a $10 expenditure…why? Because something you spend is gone. Gone forever! If you hire the so-called expert just because they have a laptop, Internet access, and will do the job for a couple of coins, then get ready to kiss your money good bye. You can also kiss your brand’s potential good bye, and in some cases, your brand’s reputation (and operation) [Just in case you need horror stories to convince yourselves, click here http://www.searchenginejournal.com/35-social-media-fails/95613/]

2) Social Media does nothing for my brand

What you put into it is what you’ll get in return. For that reason, if you spend money just to have social media presence you won’t achieve a thing. Being present in Social Media for the wrong reasons is worse than not having any presence in the first place.

Social Media is where the conversation happens. It just so happens that because it’s free, and anyone can post what they want, what your company has to say must make its way through, and break the clutter. It must be able to soar over the perception threshold, and must give your demographic a reason to come back to your page, time and again.

Is it easy? No.
Can anyone do it? Yes, if they understand about Marketing and Advertising.

It is not about “my nephew can do it for a couple of bucks”. It’s about being professional, and being strategic. Social Media presence is about respecting your demographic, and being relevant, objective, informative (yet entertaining), and about delivering the right message at the right time. In order to be all of that, your community manager must understand that each medium is different, and that Social Media is not one independent channel. The execution of your Social Media must have a holistic approach, and must be delivered at the precise moment. And, even though you’re positioning using the same promise of sale, and delivering the same message, each medium must be addressed in its very own way.

A community manager must understand that any efforts on Social Media must reinforce the Global Communication Strategy of the company they work for / represent. They have to know that it is so much more than just posting a cute video and flooding the news feed with hashtags. It’s about listening to the conversation, and using that Momentum in favor of the brand’s Marketing. Its about generating a Return on the Company’s Investment, and its about allowing the company to perform at their best.

It is about generating a Call to Action.

Is your community manager doing that? (Or is it time to throw the towel on them)

Let us know how we can help your brand, we’d love to sit down and help your company grow.

Digital Marketing Agency

info@momaconsulting.com
(832) 480 3296