8 Huge Misconceptions Regarding Social Media

Do You Really Know Social Media? 8 Huge Misconceptions

About 10 minutes prior to writing this, I was combing through articles to see if there was a definition of social media which I really liked. There was nothing. I came across an abundance of articles which were vague and which the author had seemingly no idea what social media is.

Social media is a way to bring to people together via the web and spark an interest in the online community, thus enabling these users to converse about said topic (or topics) together on your social media platform.

Common Misconceptions:

1. In 99% of instances, you do not know this medium if you play on Facebook and Twitter. These are social media applications which have defined and set a standard for the networking platform as we know it. Most likely, what you are doing is using these various platforms to chat with your friends and, depending on the site, possibly networking.

2. It's okay to put "social media" on my resume. Yes, due to the fact that a lot of marketing divisions of firms do not know what social media actually is, you may get away with it. However, you will eventually (and it will happen) run into somebody who knows social media and you will be embarrassed.

3. SM is for every company. Wrong! Your company is going to be competing with 100 hundred other firms in your space to get the attention of online gurus. If your company sells office products, you should probably save your money. I once had a competing recruiter ask a client who was in telecommunications hardware if the marketing person in which they needed to hire had to have experience in the medium. If none of your main competitors have an Alexa rating under 200,000, then creating a buzz through these types of platforms will cost too much money and probably won't have much effect.

4. People who truly know and can effectively execute SM can be hired for under $150,000. Being effective at social media is very, very hard. If somebody has mastered this skill, they can make your company rich. However, if you think that they are in the business to do so for under $150,000, rethink your strategy. At first, use your younger marketing representatives for help. They know it better than you and I.

5. The large companies know social media, why doesn't our company just use the same vendors? There are a few things wrong with this statement / question. First, a lot of vendors feast off of ignorance. Second, many feast off of an interview they did with some newspaper - maybe they were featured in the LA Times two years ago. Don't believe everything you read.

Third, some of these firms, in the early stages, obtained Fortune 500 clients and they use this to leverage sales with future prospects. What most people don't know is that it has a huge snowball effect. If a company was to snag a contract from a big fish, they have free reign. Forth, these companies have bigger fish to fry and, more likely than not, do not have a high priority for low paying accounts.

6. Let's keep the social media decisions to the executive marketing team. This is quite off-base as well. Do you remember those kids you hired and put in a cubicle? Like it or not, they are the closest you are going to get to a media expert. SM is a young person's game. Your firm should have these youngsters involved with every decision you make regarding social media. Swallow your pride and use the appropriate resources.

7. You're involved in the medium because your company has a video on YouTube. That's like comparing your high school football competition to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Now, if you get 1,000 hits a day to your video, yes you know social media. Though, if you did, you would probably not be reading this as it is quite elementary.

8. Putting the Twitter, Facebook logos, etc. on your site means that your firm is heavily involved in SM. If you're saying to yourself, "well, we have 2,000 followers on Twitter," look closely as to who they are as the site has a terrible spam problem.

Now that you have an idea as to what social media is, you should have fun and toss around ideas as to how to effectively utilize it for your firm. When doing so, you should have your young marketing representatives in the room as they will prove to be an invaluable resource.

Ken Sundheim is President and Founder of KAS Placement "KAS Sales Recruiter"

Ken Sundheim runs KAS Placement New York sales and marketing recruiters. KAS is headquartered in New York City. All New York City marketing recruiters at KAS are trained in-house.

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Social Media Explained at an Expert Level Regarding B2B Social Media

I felt the need to write this article after a recruitment firm asked one of our clients if the marketing person whom they were staffing needed to know social media. The job was a product marketing position and our client is a transoceanic fiber optic cable owner and operator. This question immediately raised concern amongst myself and my company's sales and marketing recruiters. The problem with social media is that some marketing employees do not take the time to learn about its strengths and weaknesses prior to moving forward with a marketing plan involving social media. What marketing professionals and the people who hire them need to understand is that "social media" is exactly what it sounds like. It is something that most people view and disseminate in their free time, and there are only certain industries that are truly able to benefit from it. From what our sales and marketing recruiters have observed, most of these companies benefitting from social media do not sell their product to other businesses. Instead, they sell straight to the consumer. For example, YouTube is technically social media, but most CEOs just use it as an excuse to get themselves on web television. While some business to business social media initiatives do turn out to be successful marketing tactics, more often than not they simply use up time and energy (and money) that might be better spent focusing on other forms of business development.

The sales and marketing recruiter who asked our client about whether or not the candidate needed to know about social media really had no idea what he or she was talking about. First of all, to get an expert in the field (somebody who knows what they are talking, as opposed to just throwing the phrase on their resume) it is going to cost a lot.

Second, a company (our client) that is marketing themselves as a cost effective transoceanic fiber service with 10G capacity (instead of the 40G lines, which make up the majority of transoceanic cables) is mainly targeting technology departments within financial-related companies and most likely has no need to create a social buzz about their product. The product is cost effective but not cutting edge. However, our client was about to hire the vendor who asked the aforementioned question, and for a lot of money. I don't know why 80% of marketing employees don't learn social media, but they don't. From what our sales recruiters have observed, however, the best ones always do. Personally, this makes me skeptical of many of them. A lack of knowledge regarding social media and its uses results in marketing departments opening up the company checkbook to the first person who calls and says the words "social media." Since this type of media is an aspect of marketing, it is the marketing department head's responsibility to stay up to date with how useful or irrelevant it is to the company's business development.

Another facet which made the aforementioned statement seem like the individual did not know what they were talking about it is the fact that if our client was to put something on YouTube, it would not be found. How many tech departments at hedge funds are searching around YouTube or Google Video for transoceanic cable providers? Instead, the prospective head of marketing for this company would need to know that they are not going to create a huge buzz via the social media channels, including Twitter. Most firms with a B2B focus might start a blog hoping to get followers on Twitter, but their target market is probably not searching around for blogs or Twitter feeds. Optimizing the company blog for SEO is not going to work either unless you are an expert at search engine optimization. Twitter really works best for online newspapers, celebrity watch lists, sports news (fantasy football) trending, etc. Everybody is talking about social media, but only a small percentage of the population actually knows what it is. The statement by the above-mentioned recruiter showed a lack of any knowledge of this form of media because, for the most part, our client would want to stay out of social media. Besides signing on a large client and wanting to get the word out (technically PR marketing, not social media), seemingly the only interesting media the firm would be able to get to draw attention to themselves would be negative coverage in online or traditional media.

Ken Sundheim is President and Founder of KAS Sales Recruiters Our sales headhunters are glad to write sales recruitment articles for your enjoyment - sincerely, the sales employment team at KAS Sales Recruiters

sales recruitment agencies marketing staffing

Ken Sundheim KAS Placement Recruiting

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Regarding the Social Media Revolution

One definition of the word revolution is a sudden and complete change in something. A famous example, of course, is the American Revolution. Another is the counterculture revolution of the U. S. and much of Europe in the 1960s. Currently, the social media revolution is spreading the most.

People have become content producers instead of content consumers because of social network media. In short, the inmates run the asylum. The spread of information and knowledge as dramatically changed. In the past, the norm was broadcast media monologues, where one person distributes information to the masses. TV newscasts and newspaper accounts are the more well known of this.

These norms, however, are being made to exist side by side with what this new revolution is bringing about. Now, any number people may distribute given information to the masses. Everyone is now both receiver and distributor. Hence, these people are now known as content producers.

Several popular forms of this exist. One common form is easily recalled ideas or slogans made to galvanize others into repeating them frequently. Another form is print media designed to be scattered again to the public. A third form is the sharing from electronic media, including mobile devices and the Internet, with advanced search capabilities is a third. A final example is grass-roots direct action distribution, including public speaking, rallies, and demonstrations.

Traditional media, also known as mass media, broadcast media, or industrial media, differs from social media in many ways. To begin, social media is less expensive and more easily accessible. Mass media normally needs more resources to be able to share information. Second, industrial media production normally necessitates learning specialized skills; normally, social media does not.

Third, response time and relevancy are more impacted, whereas, the time lag in social media can be instantaneous. In industrial media it often takes hours or even days. However, it should be taken into account that as industrial media takes on more and more of social media's tendencies, there might not be such differences much longer.

Fourth, permanence is treated very differently by the two. In mass media, after an article is printed and distributed, it cannot be changed. Corrections, retractions, and apologies may be necessary, but the article is unable to be altered. In social media, however, changes can instantly be made.

It is interesting, however, to note the similarities between the two forms of media. Both types of media can be dispersed to a worldwide audience or to a local one. A blog posting may reach no one or it may reach everyone. TV news broadcasts may reach the same ranges of people.

Of course, it is hard to predict the future direction of both social media and traditional media. One school of thought is that a hybridization of the two is occurring and will continue to. In this case, it is the use of both media frameworks. In fact, this hybrid is already being used more and more.

Whatever the future brings, the social media revolution is not transient. It is here for good, even as its future direction is still not clear. Will hybridization continue evolving? Will mass media, as we know it, continue? Will social media evolve to the point that it engulfs both the traditional and the hybrid?

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.