7 social media myths debunked

By Nick Westergaard, creative/account director, Westergaard Advertising, Coralville

In the film “Up in the Air,” George Clooney advises his protégée to use profiling to get through the airport security line quicker. He defends his move, quipping, “I'm like my mother, I stereotype. It's faster.”

Sometimes, when things are new and outside our skill set, we look for quick handles - right or wrong - to grab a hold of to make our decisions easier. Social media is a perfect example of this.

As a rapidly evolving new channel, social media can be hard for many to grasp. In an effort to sort the fact from the fiction, I'm going to clear up some of the most prevalent social media myths circulating in business today.

MYTH #1

Social media is just a bunch of people posting what they had for lunch.

My favorite study to cite when addressing this myth is one on Twitter used by Pear Analytics. The study shows that 40 percent of Twitter content is in fact pointless babble and 4 percent is spam.

OK, take the other 56 percent and you have conversations, items that pass along value and news. This clearly shows that more than half the content shared on Twitter contains valuable messages or at the very least conversations you can start with those people following your brand.

MYTH #2

Only young people are on social media - certainly not my customers.

We'd love it if this were true! But Pew Research reported earlier this year that social media use has nearly doubled in the past year, and that much of this growth has shifted to older audience segments.

The average social media user is 38 years old, up from age 33 in 2008.

MYTH #3

Facebook is for women, Twitter is for men.

Of all of these myths, this one sounds the most like George Clooney's airport stereotyping. Or the sequel to “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.”

Regardless, digital analyst Ken Burbary cites Facebook's demographics as being surprisingly balanced at 51.2 percent male and 48.8 percent female. Women actually use Twitter more actively than men (Pew), logging more than twice as many tweets and amassing more than twice as many followers on average than their male counterparts.

MYTH #4

The best measurement of social media success is your number of likes and followers.

It's a fact: Marketers like numbers. And big numbers feel like big results.

But the metrics that really matter lie a level deeper, as you start to look at your community's engagement by reviewing the conversations that are taking place on your social channels and what the sentiment is there. There also are staid marketing metrics that continue to have value in measuring social ROI such as lead generation and coupon redemption.

MYTH #5

Now that we have social media, email marketing is dead.

I often call email marketing social media's less attractive, older sibling.

A big part of email's strength lies in the unprecedented growth in the mobile market. According to the recent ComScore 2010 Mobile Year in Review report, checking email is the No. 1 mobile web activity beating general browsing, watching videos and even that attention-nabbing upstart, social media.

In fact, a survey from StrongMail shows that email marketing continues to be the top area of investment growth among marketers in 2011.

MYTH #6

If you build it (online), they will come.

This is an oldie but goodie. It actually started with the Web in general, not just social media. Once the early adopters made it to both, the majority got a whiff and wanted a piece of “all this Internet action.” Just put it on the Web or throw up a Facebook page and the Internet elves will come and spin the code into gold, right?

Social media marketing and online marketing in general requires the same investment of time into planning, implementing and measuring a successful campaign.

MYTH #7

Social media can't help my business in an impactful way.

The 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report from Social Media Examiner reports that 88 percent of all marketers indicated that their social media efforts have generated more exposure for their businesses in an increasingly noisy world.

Improving traffic and subscribers was the second major benefit, with 72 percent reporting positive results.

Furthermore, two-thirds noted an increase in search-engine ranking. As all of these metrics increase, so do the number of qualified leads and closed sales.

In short, while myths certainly travel fast and are sometimes easy to grab, greater insight always lies a level deeper with the facts.

Are there social media myths you're curious about? Email them to me at nick@westergaard.com and I'll address them here.