Bill Sledzik tagged me on what may be a returning meme, this time generated by Steve Rubel, wondering if there’s a bubble in the web 2.0 world. In my comments I acknowledged seeing some bubble-like activities.
1) Social web company approaches me last week to execute PR and social media in exchange for equity
2) A client defaults on pay, social network oriented with commercial real estate focus
3) Third company approaches me to do PR for a web 2.0 app. Self admittedly, no substance to the app. just want to get in to the “2.0? thing. Our answer was no.
It scares me to see this behavior because it is the exact same as the dot bomb era. Let’s hope it doesn’t get that far this time (Flickr Photo credit: Laura).
At the same time, when there’s this much hype about anything, it’s inevitable that all sorts of new ventures will start. Many will not succeed. It gets back to the dot bomb lesson. What’s the ROI? And all of the folks who say there should be no ROI for social media are flat out crazy. Whether its brand perception changes, increased loyalty, more return sales, more sales, there needs to be ROI.
On the marketing side there is a bubble, too, but in large part because many organizations continue to try to execute one-way communication rules; controlling the message, talking to audiences, etc. This is in place of of truly engaging in the conversation. Instead of blogodramas, these efforts increasingly fall on deaf ears.
Posers, fakes and ignorant marketing types who don’t realize the dynamics of two-way communications will fail badly out here. Social media requires your personality to come out sooner or later. Often those that don’t play well in such environments quit. They cry that social media doesn’t work, when in actuality their failure lies in approach and not the media forms.
Social means more than one, so companies that want to succeed need to get into relationship skills and out of command and control.
I leave with this. On the masthead there is a tab, listing social media case studies. Successes can be found here: http://nowisgone.com/case-studies/