Couple of stories out over the last few days that point to the challenge of thinking about social media as an easy way to drive engagement and interaction. The best one? Molson pulled the plug on Facebook photo contest, and included this money quote from the Ferg Devins at Molson/Coors:
“The whole realm of social media – there's lots to learn,” he said. “It's really a new area. We're probably groundbreaking and leading in a lot of things we've been doing.”
The Globe and Mail has this data, as well:
Business leaders are scratching their heads when it comes to using social media in their marketing, confirms a new study to be released tomorrow. The survey, done by Pollara Strategic Insights, found that 26 per cent of business and marketing leaders say they are less familiar with social media marketing than their own customers.
But the data also found that 46 per cent of business leaders say social media tools, such as Facebook, YouTube and blogs – which allow people to generate their own content and share it with others worldwide – are becoming more important than traditional mass media, including television, newspapers and radio.
And 85 per cent said these forums have become an essential component of the communications mix.
My interpretation of these stats? Skepticism, for the most part. The first one (26 percent not familiar with social media) is probably true. The second one, business leaders saying social media more important than mainstream media is laughable. Those same business leaders a year ago probably would have said "second life is more important than the mainstream media." And the 85 percent saying "essential to the communication mix" is true only in the sense that blogs are now well enough understood that most companies have a good engagement program to this set of influentials.
Bottom line? Social media engagement will continue to be a growing part of the way companies communicate to their various constituencies, but sites like Facebook, MySpace etc. are evolving so rapidly that caution is usually called for.