Social Media is more like Law & Order and Less Like CSI Miami

Social Media too often is being presented like CSI Miami all color coordinated, high tech and flamboyant, where the wow factor is considered success in Social Media.  However, the real successes in Social Media requires the through behind the scenes grinding work reminiscent of how Law & Order solve cases.

Social Media success is not about a cute marketing video that goes viral, or  a cute location based app that find stores to purchase your products.  However, because of the lack of Social Media planning among businesses and the belief that Social Media is just another marketing channel to serve up the inventory of marketing messages many companies believe that is all that is required to be successful in Social Media.

Yes the Old Spice video got millions of views but it was the work behind the scenes that increased Old Spice  sales by 107% in a one month period.  What Old Spice did was tell people to submit questions on Twitter and other online communities, and promised that their  spokesman would answer them.

What happened next was the implementation of the 3 major points of Social Media, Listen, Communicate and Publish.  Old Spice listened to the conversation from their viewers, Old Spice communicated and published by having the Man Your Man Could Smell Like answer the viewer’s questions via personalized videos on YouTube.

Over three days, Old Spice produced more than 180 videos starring spokesman Isaiah Mustafa. Every video was addressed to an individual, and each was less than 60 seconds in length. What transpired was 32 million YouTube video views and an increase in saless.

This campaign was successful because Wieden + Kennedy employed a multi faceted approach to the Old Spice strategy. they got down to the grunt work of Social Media by listening to viewers, communicating with viewers and publishing  a lot of content that spoke to different groups of viewers. Wieden + Kennedy employed a Law & Order through approach to their strategy instead of the glam no substance approach of CSI Miami.

Don’t look at Social Media as a fancy Facebook Fan page or a flashy app that you move around a giant virtual screen.  Success in Social Media does not come from a 24th century lab where your lab technicians wear the color of the day, drive Hummers and created fancy apps and widgets. Success in Social Media is grinding work as it requires you to knock on many virtual doors ask questions of the occupants and converse with them to show that you actually care about their concerns.   Success requires the use of tools to listen to the conversations about your brand.  Once you know what is being said you have to communicate with your audiences not market to them. The third part requires you to produce relevant content that empowers your audience and sends them out into the Social Media world as your brand evangelists.

To achieve real measurable success in Social Media will require that you:

• Set S.M.A.R.T. Goals (Specific – Measurable – Attainable – Realistic – Timely).
• Establish a strategy of what tools and platforms you will use to achieve your S.M.A.R.T. Goals
• Engage in the three main areas of Social Media (Listen – Communicate – Publish)
• Measure your results
• Be prepared to start all over again.

And after you’ve done all of that you may not find success in Social Media the 1st time out and you may need a lucky break to solve the case of Social Media success.  As on Law & Order every case is not neatly solved and wrapped up in 54 minutes the same is true with Social Media.  However, the grinding work of engaging in Social Media will yield more data that will get you closer to achieving Social Media success than the flamboyance of cool tools and hummers.