Some years ago I sat in a business networking group and listened as someone pitched her social media management services. Most of those in the room had little understanding of what she was offering. Some of that was due to the folks in the room having little idea at the time how social media could ever be put to business use. But the bigger issue was that this self-professed social media marketing professional could not adequately articulate the value of what she was offering!
Nevertheless, I sensed there was a nugget of value in there somewhere, so I sat with this person over coffee. She spent 20 minutes explaining how she could manage my social media for me, concluding with, “Based upon everything I’ve just shared with you, is there any reason you would not contract with me today for my services?”
I responded, “Yes. I’ve listened to you for a full 20 minutes now. I still have absolutely no idea what you are selling; cannot discern whether it would have any value to me; am unclear what would be the return on my investment; and you have not indicated how we would measure the effectiveness of your service.” She was a little taken aback, but still could not answer those questions.
This turned out to be my first of a number of events from which I formed the following opinions:
- Most baby boomers and even many Generation X business owners have been slow to see the value of social media as a business tool.
- Most Generation Y and Millennials who did have some vision for the future of social media marketing had difficulty communicating to the boomer and GenX business owners what the return on investment might be.
I recognize that those are not universally true, but those themes were strong in my social circles in the real and online worlds.
Considering that their main exposure to it came via television news about celebrities, it is not hard to understand why baby boomers and GenX’ers have lagged with social media marketing. For most, their first exposure to social media came through learning through traditional media what this and that celebrity had tweeted.
Gen Y and Millennials grew up with social media platforms being the vehicle for news delivery about their world, as celebrities and friends passed along news tidbits as well as impressions about various products, services, and companies. They don’t just understand the technology, it’s completely infused into their lifestyle. They see social media as the obvious place for a business to (carefully) promote itself, but may not be able to translate to owners and senior executives of traditonal businesses, who tend to be Boomers and Gen X, how to justify to their peers and superiors why it makes sense to invest part of the marketing budget into social media and content marketing.
Blackfish Strategy was created to bridge that gap. We look forward to working with you.