Tag: Risk

What if Everything You Know About Social Media Marketing is Wrong?

What if everything you “know” about social media marketing is wrong? What would this mean to your upcoming and current social marketing programs? Better yet, what might it mean to your job?

If you are employed in social media marketing, it is time for a healthy dose of reality followed by some serious soul searching and career planning. Some of you are lucky enough to work in the rare companies that create advocates with great products, service and mission and thus are equipped to leverage social media for marketing gain; most work at companies that have inflated their opportunities in the medium and are floundering with their social media marketing and content strategies.
Here’s the way a large number of social media professionals today go about justifying their programs, along with some recent data that may (and should) scare the hell out of you if you work in social media marketing:

  • Consumers welcome brands’ social media marketing. Untrue: A recent study by Kentico found that 68% of US consumers “mostly” or “always” ignore brand posts on every social network. A recent study of US college students by Concentric found that “nearly half stated they didn’t believe brands should be on social media or they didn’t personally follow brands” and “nearly 70% report following three or fewer brand across all social media.” A 2013 YouGov survey found that “most social media users feel negatively towards marketing strategies by companies on social media sites, with 35% saying that they often hide companies’ updates if they update too often.” And a global research study commissioned by Pitney Bowes recently found that 83% of consumers have had a bad experience with social media marketing.
     
  • Consumers find trustworthy the information shared by brands in social media. Untrue: In 2013, an Adobe study found that just 2% of US consumers felt that company social media pages were best for credibility, a figure almost 90% lower than the credibility of company websites or traditional advertising. Forrester’s recent data demonstrates that just 15% of US consumers trust the social media posts of brands, half the rate at which consumers trust information on company websites. Likewise, Nielsen recently found that ads on social networks were among the least trusted form of advertising, significantly lower than trust in ads viewed in traditional media.
  • Consumers who follow brands are interested prospects, making social an acquisition channel for brands. Untrue: The 2013 Adobe study found that more than half of consumers indicate they like brands because they already purchase from them while just than one in six US consumers indicate they like brands on Facebook because they aspire to buy from those brands. A 2013 YouGov study of UK consumers found that “the followers / likers of companies are most likely to be current customers (33%) whose primary motivation is a desire to get something in return (34%).” Digital consultancy L2 studied nearly 250 prestige brands and found that over four years, less than 0.25% of new customers had been acquired through Facebook and less than .01% from Twitter; this compares to almost 10% for paid search and 7% for email marketing. Moreover, L2 found that “customers acquired via social channels register lower lifetime value than customers acquired via search.”
      
  • Every fan and follower has value, because they reflect brand affinity and are a leading indicator of future success.  Untrue: There is no social media sacred cow more hallowed than this, yet this belief remains largely unstudied. I’ve tackled the issue twice. In 2012, I evaluated the 40 companies with the greatest Facebook fan counts that were both tracked by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) and publicly traded. I found a modest negative correlation (-0.3) between Facebook fans and customer satisfaction and no correlation (-0.1) between Facebook fans and stock performance. I repeated a similar evaluation last month, studying the stock performance of the companies with the top 50 brand accounts on Twitter; I found the average performance of these companies was no better than the NASDAQ index and their median performance was significantly below the NASDAQ index.

    This data is supported by plenty of empirical evidence; for example, Lady Gaga’s ARTPOP saw disappointing sales despite the fact she heavily promoted the release via her Twitter profile, the fourth most popular profile on the service. Blackberry has collapsed, despite being one of the most popular brands on Twitter with 4 million followers. Dippin’ Dots declared bankruptcy mere days after collecting its 5 millionth Facebook fan. And Facebook likes were found to have little to no correlation to election results in the 2010 gubernatorial and House races. I continue to believe that fans earned authentically with the right brand purpose, products and services deliver value, but so many companies have “bought” meaningless fans with deals, discounts, sweepstakes and freebies that there is no correlation to be found between fans/followers and business outcomes.
      
  • Social Media content increases purchase intent. Untrue: While some social media content can deliver sales (see the mention of @DellOutlet in yesterday’s post), there is no evidence that the vast majority of brand content leads to any demonstrable increase in purchase behavior. The Kentico study found that 72% “never” or “hardly ever” purchase a product after hearing about it on a social network. A 2013 PwC study found that only 18% purchased a product as a result of information obtained through a social media site. This finding is similar to YouGov’s finding that just 13% of all social media users have bought something as a result of reading something on social media sites.

    None of these self-reported data points are very encouraging, but the measured data on social driving purchases is even worse. IBM tracked purchases across 800 retail sites and reported that social media drove just 1% of last year’s Black Friday online purchases. Meanwhile, Experian reports that social media sites, despite being the most popular sites on the Web, account for a mere 7.7% of all traffic to retail Websites (and Pinterest drives more traffic than either Facebook or Twitter).
       
  • Earned media is a growing way to reach consumers. Untrue: Facebook remains by leaps and bounds the place where consumers do most of their socializing (capturing 57% of all social visits according to Experian and consuming more than twice as much time as any other social site per Nielsen), but earned media on Facebook is dying. Social@Ogilvy has found that brands have suffered a 50% decline in reach in the past six months, and Facebook is warning marketers to expect further declines. Ogilvy predicts “the end of organic reach” is coming. Perhaps other social platforms will furnish better reach, but with the marketers pushing large quantities of brand content at consumers with little interest in seeing marketing in their social feeds, the recipe for success does not look encouraging. 

The time has come to start preparing for a marketing reassessment of the value of social media and earned media. While it was acceptable to experiment and make assumptions five years ago when social media was young, it is no longer tolerable (nor is it wise to your career) to believe and repeat the same tired, unfounded and incorrect notions.

Why do so many marketers believe things about social media marketing that are not supported by the data? In part, it is because an entire social media marketing industry has blossomed in the last seven years, and it is far more lucrative for this army of agencies, consultants, authors and speakers to sell marketers on earned media and content strategies than to acknowledge the woeful data or track record. As Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Also, marketers tend to make the mistake of thinking their own behaviors and that of consumers are alike, but they are not. Exact Target’s 2013 study “Marketers from Mars” found that marketers were 50% more likely than consumers to like a brand on Facebook, 400% more likely to follow brands on Twitter, 100% more likely to make a purchase as a result of seeing something on Facebook and 150% more likely to have completed a purchase as a result of a tweet. Marketers have done a better job of selling themselves on the value of social media marketing than they have of selling social media users on the value of their products and services.

Not only are marketers’ social behaviors vastly different than consumers’, they also have much greater confidence in content than do consumers. In the same study, marketers and consumers were asked where their favorite companies should invest more of their marketing time and resources to improve customer loyalty. Marketers were almost 80% more likely to cite content about products and 280% more likely to see content about related topics as a driver of consumer preference.

So, is it time for marketers to dismantle their social teams and abandon their social strategies? I’ve suggested as much in the past (and I’m hardly alone in this), but I’d like to close this blog post on a (slightly) more positive note. Rather than treating the title of this post–“What if Everything You Know About Social Media Marketing is Wrong?”– as if it is rhetorical, let’s instead answer the question.

The secret to successful social media marketing–and to protecting your job–is not to bury your head in the sand, ignore the data and continue building strategies based on deeply flawed assumptions. Instead, toss out all the faulty suppositions and start from scratch.  The key to success is not to assume that social media is a marketing channel but to assume it isn’t. Watch what happens if we take that same list of unsupported beliefs and turn them on their head:

  • Consumers DO NOT welcome brands’ social media marketing:  My brand must approach customers and prospects with great respect for their time and intelligence. We should stop posting silly “like this if you’re glad it’s Friday” and “Happy National Bubble Week” posts and instead provide content and functions that are worthy of people’s time and attention.
      
  • Consumers DO NOT find trustworthy the information shared by brands in social media.  We cannot take it as a matter of fact that anything our brand shares will be found credible. Instead of investing so much in content that our brand broadcasts in social media, we should strive to give our customers a greater voice–after all, people believe each other, not brands.
      
  • Consumers who follow brands ARE NOT interested prospects, and social is a WEAK acquisition channel for brands.  My fans and followers are not prospects but are, for the most part, existing customers. Our strategies should not focus on filling the top of the funnel but on loyalty, repurchase and advocacy.
      
  • Every fan and follower DOES NOT have value, and merely having fans IS NOT a leading indicator of future success.  Our brand should not try to collect the largest fan or follower base but should target a smaller set of the right people. Rather than attract people interested in contests and sweepstakes, we should strive to engage with customers interested in our company, its mission and its products and services. A smaller fan base of more valuable consumers trumps a large fan base of disinterested people who hide, ignore or do not see our posts.
      
  • Social Media content DOES NOT increase purchase intent. A funny viral video or clever Vine may accumulate lots of likes, but if it does not drive meaningful consideration or increased purchase intent, then it is worthless marketing. We must stop settling for content that we think keeps our brands “top of mind” and instead work harder to change minds! Even more vital is that we must reconsider our metrics–social media is a relationship medium, not a direct marketing channel. Unless we care to measure results in long-term metrics such as consideration, NPS, preference and the like, we have poor alignment between our marketing investments and objectives.
      
  • Earned media IS NOT a growing way to reach consumers. In the early days of the social era, we all had high hopes for earned media, but just as consumers avoid and ignore ads in other media, so too are they escaping the reach of organic marketing content in social media. Social media marketing requires an investment in paid media, and that means we have to get much better at knowing what content and interactions deliver value (and are worth putting money behind) and what do not. 

Tossing out all the baseless assumptions makes the job of social media marketing much more difficult, but it also forces us to build stronger, better strategies from the ground up. Too many social media marketers have fallen into ruts, and this has resulted in brands vomiting a useless flow of jokey, unmemorable, indistinct and unpersuasive posts and tweets. We have to stop posting content for content’s sake and start developing strategies designed to succeed. 

The investment in social media marketing has risen over the course of years, and so have the expectations. Either we change how we approach social media strategy, or CMOs will soon change the people responsible for those strategies. 

If you assume social media is a marketing channel full of interested consumers hungry for our content and ready to purchase, then any strategy makes sense (and will almost certainly fail.) This is the path to career pain.

Social media is not a marketing channel. If you can build social strategies that are designed to triumph despite that fact, then you are on your way to securing your career in social media marketing.

But take heed: The goal of this difficult process should not merely be to determine what your brand’s marketing strategies ought to be in social media but if it should even be trying. By starting with clearheaded and factual knowledge about the difficulties, the investments required and the long-term metrics that are best aligned to social media strategies, it may lead you to determine social media is best left to others in the organization.

Whatever your decision, just make sure it is one supported in facts and not naive myths and false promises. Your brand’s future and your career depends on it. 

Three Reasons the Marketing Department Will Give Up On Earned Media in 2014

Let’s start by giving credit where credit is due: Within many companies, there is no more consistently innovative organization than the Marketing Department. Fifteen years ago, while everyone else was deriding the information superhighway as some overhyped playground for nerds, it was the Marketing group in many companies that advocated for the World Wide Web and found the budget to create the first corporate websites. And six years ago, while most executives were chuckling over their kids’ obsession with MySpace and Facebook, it was likely the Marketing Department in your company that staked out the firms’ social profile on social networks.

But while Marketing Departments may have controlled the first iteration or two of their companies’ web sites, that time has now passed. Today, the Marketing Department has responsibility for driving traffic to the site and may control the corporate website’s look and feel, but it is very unlikely (if your company is of a certain size) to own the content, the business functionality or the underlying technologies such as web content management, search, hosting, web analytics and the like. In other words, today Marketing brings its traditional strengths and capabilities in reach, scale and acquisition to the web, while other parts of the organization bring their own strengths.

Today, it is common for the Marketing function to own companies’ social media accounts. In Spring, SmartBlog on Social Media asked “Who controls the social media efforts at your organization?” and over half the respondents noted their Marketing Department is responsible for social media. No other answer even came close–Public Relations was second with just 18% of the responses.

But in 2014, it is time for change. In the same way Marketing ceded control of corporate websites as the rest of the organization matured digitally, it is now time for Marketing to leave most aspects of social and earned media to others in the organization. That means that primary responsibility for social accounts, daily posting and organic content must shift out of marketing and to other departments, if this has not already occurred.

There are three reasons why this shift is occurring and will continue to do so in 2014:

REASON ONE: IT IS INCREASINGLY DIFFICULT FOR EARNED MEDIA TO FURNISH THE REACH MARKETING NEEDS 

Earned media, that golden promise of the social era, is dying. You don’t even need to examine data to know this–just look at the wave of whiny blog posts we have seen this year from marketers accusing Facebook of breaking promises. Apparently, marketers thought Facebook was going to be a place where basic consumer behavior changed: As more brands joined social media and increased their content marketing output, consumers who avoid ads in every other medium would suddenly welcome and engage with marketing content on Facebook.

Of course, that isn’t what happened–people sign into Facebook and other social networks to see what friends, family and peers are up to, not to get marketing content. On Facebook, as more brands paid for access to users’ news feeds, it was absolutely inevitable that brands would find it increasingly difficult to “earn” their way into fans’ news feeds organically. (And if you think I am demonstrating 20/20 hindsight, feel free to read my blog post from almost two years ago, “Did Facebook Just Kill Earned Media?”)

How difficult is it becoming to generate earned media on Facebook? Two recent studies demonstrate that engagement and penetration are sinking very quickly. Komfo found a 42% decrease in fan penetration from August to November, and an Ignite study revealed that in the week following Facebook’s December 2nd news feed tweak, brand page organic reach declined by 44% on average. Ignite notes, “Facebook once said that brand posts reach approximately 16% of their fans. That number is no longer achievable for many brands, and our analysis shows that roughly 2.5% is now more likely for standard posts on large pages.”

And if you think the earned media bloodletting is over, think again. The slow decline of earned media on Facebook will continue in 2014. Ad Age recently reported that Facebook is telling marketers, “We expect organic distribution of an individual page’s posts to gradually decline over time as we continually work to make sure people have a meaningful experience on the site.”

Make no mistake, the phenomenon of shrinking earned media is not just a Facebook issue. Facebook is on the cutting edge of social media because of its scale and longevity (not to mention investor expectations, with a market cap almost 50% greater than Twitter’s, LinkedIn’s and Yahoo’s combined), so it provides a peek into the future of all social media. As more brands pay for access and as social networks strive to monetize, brands’ earned media will get pushed aside.

Earned media is dead; long live paid media! Marketers should not mourn the loss of earned media but rejoice that their traditional skills and abilities are in ever higher demand. The need for paid media expertise in social media has never been higher and is going to continue growing. The Marketing Department is uniquely equipped to stay abreast of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks’ rapidly evolving ad programs, develop and test targets and creative, and measure advertising success. Marketing can focus on what it does best and leave the rest of social media to others.

Exception to the rule: While it is ever more difficult to gain access to consumers via earned media, this is not a universal problem for all categories. Entertainment, news and style brands continue to have opportunities to increase reach and engagement both in traditional social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as the newer breed of visual platforms such as Vine, Instagram, Pinterest and perhaps, if they can prove themselves to marketers, Snapchat and Whatsapp. Most other categories simply do not have the luxury of innate consumer interest, and trying to manufacture it where little exists only pushes brands to, well, let’s move on to reason number two…

REASON TWO: THE HARDER MARKETERS TRY TO WIN EARNED MEDIA, THE GREATER THE RISKS

As earning organic social media becomes more difficult, marketers get more desperate to break through, which elevates the risk for brands. No consumer hopes for a daily dialog with their brand of canned pasta, as evidenced by the fact Spaghettios has just 2,600 people “talking about the brand” despite having amassed 518,000 “fans.” Since no national brand can succeed with a marketing effort that has a reach of just 2,600 consumers (and since some Social Media Marketing Manager’s job depends on it), Spaghettios’ Marketing Department has to churn out daily content that struggles to get more attention than other brands. The more they produce and the harder they try, the greater the risks, so it is of little surprise that Spaghettios stumbled instead of soared. The brand’s recent Pearl Harbor Day post of a smiling brand logo waving the American flag was widely criticized and embarrassed the brand.

Spaghettios apologized and said its intent was to pay respect, but you and I both know that is not true. This was marketing content, and the goal in posting it was to achieve what marketers always want to achieve in social media–likes, comments and shares. The intent of the smiling cartoon Spaghettio was not to pay respect but to create brand engagement (and in that, at least, the brand succeeded).

Of course, I should not pick on the Campbell Soup brand when there is an almost limitless number of examples of social marketing missteps to choose from in 2013: The #AskJPM, #AskBG and #AskRKelly hashtag dustups; endless look-alike newsjacking after the royal baby’s birth; embarrassing campaigns to extort retweets in exchange for charitable dollars; failure to control social accounts from dismissed employees; pathetic fake account hacks to jack up follower counts; branded hashtags inserted into tweets about tragedies; accidentally racist posts; misguided humor about fatal airport crashes. Was that enough, or should I go on?

Okay, I will! Epicurious insensitively exploiting the Boston Marathon tragedy for social content. Kenneth Cole joking about war to sell footwear. Taco Bell turning fans into detractors by mistakenly sending thousands to restaurants that were not yet carrying a promised new product. Nokia failing to put a language filter in place, permitting someone to post “F### you” on its corporate account. (Yes, that “F” word!) The Onion calling a nine-year-old girl a c###. (Yes, that “C” word!)

In 2014, we will see still more brand blunders in social media, but there is a simple solution: Stop trying so hard! With shrinking opportunities to reach the kind of mass scale marketers want and need, consider the risks versus the potential modest rewards. If you do, many of you will shut off the lights on those special-event real-time marketing newsrooms–your brand is more likely to be criticized for spamming consumers’ conversations than be next year’s Oreo Blackout. Put an end to those tweet-this-or-we-won’t-save-a-starving-child campaigns, which consumers increasingly see as mercenary attempts to boost brand reach. Stop desperately asking people to “like this if you love Fridays.” Tactics like those may deliver some bumps in your social media analytics, but they are more likely to create negative sentiment than to boost consideration, purchase intent or loyalty at any reasonable scale.

Note that I said to stop trying so hard, not stop trying altogether. Brands certainly have a place in social media, but the time has come to focus not on what your marketing department wants but on what your customers want: Deals, information, education, customer service, co-creation and social functionality. In this list, the Marketing Department is best aligned to furnish just one type of content–promotions. The remainder of the content and services are better left to Public Relations, Customer Care, Product Management and Development and Channel Management.

The Marketing Department is an important provider of content for social channels, but that does not mean those social channels should be run by Marketing with the goal of producing marketing results. In the coming year, I anticipate we will see more Public Relations and Customer Care departments take over companies’ social accounts. This will decrease the chances for the kind of social missteps that embarrass brands. No PR or customer service department will ever post an image of a smiling Spaghettio waving a flag, newsjack a national event or fake an account hack. Those departments do not need to win a battle for hundreds of thousands of eyeballs in order to succeed, and they will not push the envelope until, inevitably, the envelope tears and creates a social PR mess.
Exception to the rule: If your brand does not offer the kind of customer experience that earns advocates, then attempting to earn organic attention at scale is difficult and risky. If, however, your company creates advocates with a great product or service experience, that bestows opportunities for social media marketing that is safer and more prone to success. Coca-Cola, USAA, Apple, Trader Joe’s and other successful brands don’t succeed in the real world because they have great social media; they succeed in social media because they offer a great experience in the real world.

REASON THREE: THERE IS LITTLE EVIDENCE THAT SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING SUCCESS DRIVES BUSINESS SUCCESS

No matter what your corporate social media scorecard may imply, all engagement is not created equal. Getting consumers to engage with your jokey posts or videos is not the same as making a brand impression, building purchase intent or driving sales. Too many brands continue to chase social media metrics while failing to measure how and if social media efforts drive business results. For every Dove “Real Beauty” or Secret “Let Her Jump” that delivers measurable marketing results, there are dozens of other social campaigns that fall far short.

It is easy to see the gap between social media success and business success by looking at Kmart’s 2013 efforts. Few brands were as talkable as Kmart this year. Thousands of blog posts and tweets trumpeted the brands’ success with funny viral videos like “Ship My Pants” (20 million views!), “Big Gas Savings” (6 million views!), “Show Your Joe” (16 million views!) and the new “Ship My Trowsers” (3 million views in a week!) Even though Kmart, which is owned by Sears, amassed twice as many views as top-rated primetime program NCIS has viewers, the retailer has continued its slow decline, with same-store sales falling 2.1% in the second quarter and an equal amount in the third quarter. As Mashable’s Todd Wasserman notes, “It’s hard to make a case that the ads did much for owner Sears’s bottom line.”

In the article on Mashable, Sears chief digital marketing officer says he judges success by “the amount of engagements in social media surrounding the brand.” It is long past time for digital and social media leaders to stop this kind of idiotic babble. Marketing that entertains or engages without driving measurable brand or business benefits is failed marketing. Television ad buyers don’t claim success based on gross rating points, and neither should digital and social marketers claim success can be counted in “likes” rather than dollars, new customers or brand equity (such as awareness and purchase intent).

Kmart is not the only brand we can study to see the tenuous relationship between social media success and business success. Late last year, Red Bull launched an amazing social campaign around Felix Baumgartner’s record-setting skydive. The YouTube video earned 35 million views and got everyone talking. Two months ago, uberVU evaluated Red Bull’s and Monster’s social media presence and declared Red Bull the winner. But while Red Bull may be winning the social media battle, it is losing the market share war. In recent years, Red Bull has been slowly bleeding market share to Monster, and the trend continued in 2013. In Monster’s third quarter earnings call, CEO Rodney Sacks announced that Monster’s year-over-year growth was greater than Red Bull’s and that Monster was close to overtaking Red Bull in US market share.

Two of the biggest social media marketing successes of the past fourteen months seem to be driving no demonstrable brand success. Maybe my Kmart and Red Bull examples seem unfair since, of course, social media is but one small factor in overall brand success or failure. After all, customers disappointed with past Kmart experiences won’t be enticed into stores with a funny video, and Red Bull may be leaking market share because competitors have better product innovation. If you buy this line of reasoning, then you are acknowledging my point–entertaining consumers with funny videos and knee-slapping posts do little to impact the bottom line when consumer perception of the brand is shaped by more powerful experiences with the product or service.

I see little evidence that entertaining consumers with social content imparts benefits to brands. Consumers are awash in entertainment options, and your brand cannot compete with the likes of Beyonce, PewDiePie, Cinema Sins, Rihanna or Reddit. Those channels and pages, and thousands of entertainment options like them, are unencumbered by the limitations faced by your brand, such as reputation considerations, brand fit, legal and regulatory concerns and, most of all, the need to drive purchase of goods and services. (Yes, Rihanna and Beyonce want you to buy their music, but in that case their entertainment is their product, while your brand is left producing diverting videos in the wild hope they will drive folks to purchase pistachios or bottled water.)

Exception to the rule: While big, established brands show little sign of being able to alter brand behavior with tweets and YouTube videos, small and unknown brands and individuals still have opportunities to leverage earned media to gain attention and achieve success. From Blendtec to Justin Bieber to GoldieBlox, upstart brands have demonstrated that the right content can build awareness and change minds.

WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE MARKETING AND EARNED MEDIA? 

There remain several ways marketers can succeed in social media, including paid media and using social networks to distribute promotions. In addition, brands that create advocates through superior customer experience can work to increase Word of Mouth. For many marketers, however, 2014 will be the year they must contend with the diminishing reach, increased risk and dubious business results of organic content and earned media. The earned media equation is changing, and marketers must ensure they don’t make the mistake of committing to a strategy that cannot deliver the audience, opportunities and results necessary.

The time is right for a reassessment of your brands’ cost-benefit equation with respect to marketing content in social media. If you are achieving significant organic scale and positive outcomes for a reasonable cost, keep up the good work. But if you are employing writers, videographers, photographers, illustrators and other creatives to develop social media content that is reaching too few customers and fails to deliver measureable results, then a change is in order.

There is no shame in acknowledging that earned media does not offer the marketing opportunities that we hoped for years ago as social media was developing. There is, however, shame in continuing to invest if the strategy is not producing results or in striving so hard for marketing success that the company is embarrassed with a social media misfire.

In 2014, I believe the time has come for a normalization of roles in social media. Your organization has professionals with decades of experience creating earned media, and they are not in Marketing but PR. Your organization also has professionals able to scale one-to-one relationships, answer customer questions and engage consumers individually, and they are found in Customer Care. These are the departments that can better manage corporate social accounts. More importantly, they can measure success on their own terms, with metrics based on responsiveness, reputation and satisfaction rather than on acquisition and sales.

The shift has already happened at many companies, but if the Marketing Department at your firm still “owns” the corporate social media accounts, it may be time for them to hand over the keys. Moreover, if your marketing function is ramping up a content marketing program at the same time earned media opportunities are vanishing, caution and careful consideration of costs and goals is advised. Marketing will always have a role on social networks, but the time has come to recognize that social media is not primarily a marketing channel but is better aligned to the longstanding responsibilities and capabilities of others throughout the organization.

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