Social Media as a Softening Agent

I guess it depends on who's doing the social media and how well they are doing it. I see some people doing social media very well (subtle but effective) and it makes their company seem more likable with better name recognition. On the other hand, the more blatant approaches are the opposite of softening and can actually drive people away. I believe social media, like PR, can be used for good, bad, and ugly.

Horses for courses I'd say.... but definitely whatever we do on the Social side will either lead or compliment the overall campaign. As to which thing leads, depends where the point of conversion is. Like you say - this stuff is near perfect for driving awareness / comnversions in B2B. Small knowledge-based audiences and campaigns.... Social softens up and tips them

very interesting topic, Social media is afterall as stated human engaging, building trust and relationships. Alot of marketing is done on social media now adays.

Might even be the right way to approach it from within larger organizations that is really into traditional marketing, advertising and pr. adding it to the mix and blending the SM ROI into the larger picture of all marketing, advertising and pr.

http://twitter.com/franswaa

More and more the trend will be to think more holistically about the entire campaign environment ... the nature and needs of the audience | participant also plays a factor ... but I believe the most powerful campaigns bloom at the intersection of online, traditional and event-based presentation

I would guess it also depends on who you market too. Are your customers using social media? If not it might not make a lot of sense.
I see a lot of consumer goods brands on social media, which makes sense. But there are huge industries of capital good producers which would most likely never use social media tools as their consumers simply aren't there.

Outstanding topic, Mr. Brogan. I also agree that social media can add a human touch to marketing, but it depends on the delivery. The company that trots out its C-suite as warm and fuzzy may end up shooting itself in the foot with a sappy, feigned "we care" attitude. I personally am excited to see how social-media-as-marketing-tool unfolds.

You should be able to A/B test fairly easily, then. Here's Brand A without social media, here's Brand A with social media. Here's the conversion rate, the funnel, and at the end of the day, social media delivered X% increase in sales.

Great topic, Chris. Agree with Shelia and Rusty above in that SM offers a more human touch - even if you don't know who's pushing the offering. The hyper-viral nature of today's online communties, the human touch is vital. No doubt, SM warms up the audience for the main event.

If you look at converting sales (the hard sell), then you most likely can picture the conversion funnel. The softening agent is a great analogy, but when we're in the board room and talking to the check writers, we've always talked about the social media element as doing two things to that funnel: 1) it widens the "mouth" of the funnel to bring more people in, and 2) it has them "enter" the funnel further down the path (the softening) that allows for more conversions.

Social Media as a softening agent - I like this analogy. I also think of it as the fans out there pushing the message to their friends. Its a soft sell and at some level it isn't even a sell. But I do agree that it all needs to work as a unified effort even if the "ROI" may not be as easy to quantify with Social Media.

SM is *just* another channel. The overall presence of brand needs to still be balanced across the appropriate and relevant media based on what companies know and assume about their target audience. The ideal situation is one in which each channel deepens the relationship between consumer and company, culminating in personal engagement and eventual goal attainment. No matter what the channel, companies are engineering an overall brand presence -- hopefully, it's a balanced presence that delivers the ROI both client and agency expect.

Coming from a traditional PR background, I've told countless clients that PR (specifically media relations) won't "seal the deal" for their company -- but it can help soften the market, raise awareness, etc. Likewise, it seems that social media can have a similar, broader effect on consumers. As always, interesting post. Thanks for sharing.

Heather (@prtini)

Social Media is a new face on an old way of marketing. With the advent of the internet the ability to reach the globe has created that change.

My father was a salesman he created social relationships with his clients via, post cards, birthday cards, letters and even a Bar-B-Que in the parking lot. These methods are some of the ways he built relationships with the community, his neighbors, clients and potential clients. Of course they were to soften the sell but he also had a real interest in people.

Sheila

I'm torn in different directions when I watch people engage social media (especially from a business perspective). I've always viewed SM as a form of "back door" marketing... a "hey, how ya doing, nice to meet ya" kind of door opener for your product solution. I watch some people jump online and throw their sales pitches directly down everyone's throat - but then I monitor some people who NEVER try and sell anything at all (and they're known as a professional online marketer). I suppose the approach depends on the personality and what's worked for them in the past (or a learners permit for the SM novice). I enjoy SM and utilize their platforms to get my name out and above all else -- learn what's happening NOW online. I mean who's really going to buy my junk if they don't know me, trust me or identify with me. Thanks for a good post.

What's the end goal? What gets you there directly, and what's the scenic route? It's all part of the same composite ROI, but the ROI for the individual pieces has to be defined. And a Facebook page isn't likely to sell 3 million units of Product X all by itself; everything's relative.

Great way of looking at it. Using social media to humanize an organization and create a positive relationship is still marketing but definitely softens the pitch of the organization.

Great post.

You couldn't be more right!

The 'softening' is the true reason a company should use Twitter and other forms of social media. Many companies appear to most of us as the monolithic black boxes. What goes on inside? Who knows?

For those that use Twitter as a company RSS feed - FAIL. That's what your RSS feed is for! Use Twitter to connect and interact with your customers. Listen to the good and the bad. Find out what they want and give it to them. Then talk to them some more about how the liked it. Or didn't. Feedback, market research, it's all there. You just have to give to get.

Traditional advertising still has a huge market - so many are not yet on social media in spite of Twitter, social media's darling, being the recent media darling and/or media target for easy jokes. I agree with Doug and Mitchell that often incorporating social media as part of the entire campaign creates an environment where the traditional ad placement is the softening agent (or gateway) into social media.

I think anything that helps a company become more human. more real-world, and more two-way is always good, and social tools do that better for less than a lot of other options. Since Citrix's toolset seems to be a substitute for actual face-to-face meetings, they could definitely benefit from some human context . The whole idea of a Webinar upsets me, so I would be very much influenced by a real person on the other end of the cable modem, adding a human side to the company's offerings, explaining how they work, providing real examples in real time.

i like the notion if it humanizing the brand. giving the option for 2 way communication if it's what you want in far more comfortable way than a 1-800 number.

Social media is about humans engaging, not businesses selling and we all I feel "softer" to companies who appear human. So it is, without a doubt, one of the values of corporate presence in social media - so long as it is human and engaging.

Mitchell, you beat me to it! That was my initial thought: why can't traditional ads/marketing soften people up (isn't "branding" a softener?) for a social media end game? It really depends on the company/brand/campaign/audience.

I think we need to take this analogy out of strictly "social media" thinking.

Chris,

Social media is like dating. Yes, I am The Love Linguist so it all comes down to dating and relationships for me.

Social media is the" look before you commit" process because of the accessibility and transparency. It is the "kiss test" before getting physical (giving email to optin, handling over credit card number, recommending to friends).

You can check out profiles, photos, and what people write. Are you all business or do you have personal side? Do you only tweet and chat to direct someone to buy something (or comment on a blog post) or do you carry on a conversation.

Dale Carnegie said it best in his book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" - Be interested in them.

Sherrie Rose
The Love Linguist
http://www.twitter.com/sherrierose

P.S. I love business, marketing, cyberspace, and being an entrepreneur. Being The Love Linguist (I help men with women) keeps me focused on human interaction and relationships in the physical world.

Everything ultimately has an ROI attached to it - it's just a matter of having the data to back it up. It goes back to the classic funnel. Generally data supports that display advertising acts as the top end funnel for search ads (if a company cuts display significantly, they see search start to dry up). Most of search is just navigational keywords that companies pay for driven by upper funnel behavior.

Social media likely has some effect, but without real metrics it's just anecdotal. You can hypothesize as much as you want that about what part of the chain social media boosts, but without numbers it's just guessing.

I like the softening agent analogy. No matter how hard we try, right now, social media is perceived by a lot of people controlling the marketing budget as: weird, fancy, non-ROI-friendly, populist, 'non-billboardable', non TV-friendly. So - yes, for the time being, it's better to take the scraps of budget allocated for 'doing intelligent things using social media tools' and watch the rest of the money being spent on print advertising et al. It won't always be like this.

I think it works great for B2B brands, too. I'd much rather buy an EMC box to run my company's database, if I know the folks can be reached easily via social channels.

Clearly social media is a good thing for most consumer brands. At the end of the day finding that mix of media which works for your brand is the most important thing you can do. I really like the strategy of having separate strategies for each media and then bringing them together. Social media as it relates to other media outlets is kind of like going to DisneyLand.

One minute your on Space Mountain and the next minute your on Main street....ok so maybe this is a bad example..still the concept is simple. The social media strategy and most importantly messaging is different then the traditional media messaging.

Dabbah

Hey, nice post Chris. But it can also be the other way around where traditional media is the softening agent.