Are marketers abandoning the tried and true in a race to be hip?

By Tom Nixon
Partner
Identity Marketing & Public Relations

What is your Twitter handle? And Jaiku? What’s your Facebook page? And how often do you bookmark on del.icio.us? Pownce yet?

What? You’re not doing any of this? Aren’t you afraid of what you’re missing?

Hold on. Let’s all take a deep breath and start at the beginning. Because perhaps jumping on the latest social networking bandwagon isn’t for you. But maybe it is. There’s only one way to find out, and it’s as tried and true as the original Internet itself.

First, let’s be honest. It’s almost impossible to keep up.

We’ve been lamenting (or celebrating, if you like) for years that technology moves so fast that, if you blink, you’ll miss something. In fact, it doesn’t seem like that long ago that companies were rushing to establish “a presence” on the Web—most often in the form of a Web site that was basically a company brochure online. Then came e-commerce, and if you weren’t selling on the Web, you were losing on the Web. Even e-mail became outdated for a short time, in favor of instant messaging. Now, IM applications everywhere lay dormant, as people flock to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace in order to stay instantly connected and update statuses. Seemingly five minutes ago, if you didn’t have a blog, you were a dinosaur. Now some contend that blogging is extinct, while microblogging sites like Twitter reap Darwinian bounty. The paint on Twitter’s world headquarters is barely dry and technophiles are already migrating to other, newer microblogging sites, such as Jaiku and Pownce.

When does it stop?

Far be it for an old curmudgeon like me (in his 30s) to stand in the way of progress, but I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t all moving too fast. If Facebook is here today and gone tomorrow, what will be lost in a company’s or individual’s investment in time and resources in its race to join the Facebook frenzy now?

When we rush to jump aboard speeding bandwagons, always looking to the next best thing while eschewing our pet toys from only a few months ago, we run the risk of abandoning the fundamentals of communication and marketing. We avert discipline and long-term strategy in favor of the latest fads.

If blogging made strategic sense two years ago, my guess is that it still makes strategic sense for your organization today. If, on the other hand, you were simply blogging two years ago so as to not feel left out of the latest craze, chances are you were in it for the wrong reasons then and don’t see value in it now.

One can’t help but hear the chorus of social-networking experts who are encouraging companies and individuals of all stripes and affiliations to harness the enormous potential of what they call “Web 2.0” and wonder, “Am I missing out on something?” The temptation is to rush in (remember what they say about “fools”) and do it just because everyone else is doing it. Or a competitor is doing it.

Of course, this is reactive. And it’s playing defense. These are not recipes for marketing success.

So…don’t do it, or do it?
What shouldn’t change amidst this quickly evolving communication landscape is strategy—fundamental disciplines that can’t get ignored when developing any marketing program. However, it seems that too often marketers forget discipline and strategy, and dive right into uncharted waters without ever dipping a toe.

These fundamentals apply to the core marketing tactics (advertising, PR, direct marketing) as well as to the latest and greatest social networking fads:

Who is your audience? If your target audience is not among the early adopters of social networking sites, and won’t be for years, obviously this doesn’t make sense to pursue. If you don’t know, find out. Don’t do anything until your research is done.

What are your objectives? Is your objective to raise awareness, create buzz, sell products, or meet prospects…or something else? Every objective has its best tactic, and every tactic has an associated ROI. Don’t assume that they all end with dot-com.

What are your expectations? Are you expecting to generate sales or expand an audience, and what are those numbers? Come up with a tangible, but realistic, set of expectations. Then ask yourself if social networking (or marketing online at all) will realistically achieve those ends.

Is it a valuable use of your time and reasonable to achieve? If you decide your company needs a blog, will anyone have time to post on it? Is it reasonable to expect a CEO to update on Twitter every hour or so? Be honest about what you’re asking, and of whom.

There is no marketing silver bullet, which is why new tools keep emerging every day. And if there were one answer, we’d all know it by now and everyone would be doing it. The key is to explore all options, engage in varied and complimentary marketing disciplines, and to align your plan with your objectives, audiences, and expectations.

If you do all of the above, your answer to the question of whether you should be on Twitter (and what’s next) will reveal itself, and your plan will become clear. Some of the tactics you will decide to employ might seem like dinosaurs, but they have also been time-tested and have proven to generate results.

Regarding the latest “killer app” to hit the Web, I would simply encourage that the next time someone asks you, “Are you on ‘phlenkerkemp’?” that you take a deep breath and think about why you should be on phlenkerkemp in the first place, is your target audience embracing this new Internet doodad, and will you care in 24 months?

Tom Nixon is a partner with Bingham Farms, Mich.-based Identity Marketing & Public Relations, a full-service marketing and public relations firm specializing in business-to-business marketing communications. He can be reached at 248-258-2333 or via e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Incidentally, follow him on Twitter @tnixon16.