The first Black Friday and Cyber Monday since the Great 2009 Social Media Explosion are now behind us. The first reports are in and it looks like many retailers had a great week.
I wonder if any CEOs who recently “gave in” to their marketing advisors and signed off on SM efforts are right now going over sales figures for the year and wondering why they’re not seeing a big payoff from Social Media.
The reality is Social Media is not e-commerce.
I’m not criticizing any CEOs who don’t get that…yet! For now, I am finding fault with any marketing directors (and God forbid any PR managers) who sold Social Media efforts internally as online magic that makes cash registers ring.
I fear that some people in the marketing and communications industry have set unreachable goals in order to sell their CEOs on Social Media Campaigns. Or perhaps they are measuring social media mentions in terms of Revenue per Tweet.
There IS an online community where any company can expect the cash register to ring the moment they establish a presence. It’s called e-bay.
But unlike social media, e-commerce and auction sites won’t allow an organization to engage with its customers, learn from them, build loyalty, and all of the things that social media can do that we haven’t thought of yet!
Thanks to my colleague Jeff Tidyman of eNR Services for suggesting this topic. End of rant and enough blogging for today… I’ve got to go check on how my eBay auctions are doing. That’s where the big money is.
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