A recent post by marketing guru Seth Godin suggests that marketing is as much an art as a science.
Scientific approaches may well be more relevant in Social Media Marketing (SMM) than in traditional marketing simply because nearly everything is measurable. The core of all marketing is research and fact-based analysis. The creative part is involved in product development and marketing communications but when it comes to strategy, marketing is predominantly a science.
Social media is a new, unique marketing channel. Many marketeers suspect that it is simply hyperbole because of its phenomenal growth rate. This is because they are confusing the use of social media in a networking sense with SMM.
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." Albert Einstein
Social media networking to gain prospects can be a colossal waste of time. You should only use networking through social media in a professional sense to turn prospects into customers and use SMM (not networking) to attract those prospects.
SMM is a process of planning, delivering and analysing corporate messages so as to attract prospects.
SMM involves almost no social interaction whatsoever. It is about the efficient distribution and propagation of your content across social media. It is about increasing the exposure of the content you already have or the content you are soon to develop.
It is ‘social’ because it is passed from person to person, network to network, by people. Your job is to find the key social media marketing leverage points where your content can add maximum value, distribute your content there and let social mechanisms do the rest. This is effective Social Media Marketing.
The numbers can be tracked and compared to the time and resources put in to gain prospects. This part of SMM is scientific: yet content development is creative and, like any other marketing communications discipline, based on a clear brief. Muddy the waters on briefing and all the art in the world will not rescue the project.
When it comes to strategy, marketing is predominantly a science
Every time money is involved, there is a need for metrics to avoid past mistakes and make the most of every pound. Metrics serve to assess what went wrong and right and why.
They can indicate what will and will not work from past experience. Yet great marketing is an art and, like art, does not lend itself to formulas. Just like artists, marketers that rely on formulas can be good, but never great.
SMM is no different in this respect. Analysts are essential but art is everything. At Juice, we have a meld of disciplines which range across creativity to hard analysis. Somewhere in there is a raft of social media familiarity and IT skills, email marketing experience, SEO and technical webmaster skills.
