What's the point in doing something you're not sure is going to work? Well there's plenty of good reasons. You might have a great feeling about it. You might feel like you have to give it a try, or else you'll never know. You might think failure is just success in progress, or other nice luvie dovie sentiments, and honestly believe you'd better give this thing a go and if it doesn't work then it's just a great learning experience.
All perfectly noble reasons. However, what usually isn't a good reason for doing something is because everyone else is. Yet that seems to be the picture we see when it comes to brand's use of social media, according to marketing consultancy the Brand Gym.
Shockingly, 62% of brands are only using social media because it makes them look like they're 'keeping up with the latest trends' rather than because of tangible evidence of the benefits to the business. This is according to surveys of over 100 marketing directors. Companies can't know the benefits of social unless they're measuring it properly, and it would be interesting to see how many of these businesses are properly attributing social traffic and how they measure it's success or otherwise. However, the evidence is clearly there that lots of businesses aren't seeing real benefits from social media. Marketing directors need to shit or get off the pot. Either build proper attribution models which can prove social's benefits (if they are there- for some businesses they won't be), or don't use it. Do or do not. There is no try.
By Robert Allen
Rob Allen is Marketing Manager for Numiko, a digital agency that design and build websites for purpose driven organisations, such as the Science Museum Group, Cancer Research UK, University of London and the Electoral Commission. Rob was blog editor at Smart Insights from 2015-2017. You can follow Rob on LinkedIn.
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