Social Media Marketing = No Free Lunches.
Captain Granny’s Log. Blog No 1. Jozi 2am 6 July 2021. 2020 vision, baby!
I embarked on a journey in 2017. I had to throw myself into and to take our small family businesses seriously after recovering from a five-year love affair with Sauvignon Blanc! My youngest daughters were old enough for me to sever at least one of the Mommy apron strings, AND I was newly and sexily sober. It was time to get to grips with our small, entrepreneurial businesses and learn everything I could about social media in context of digital online marketing.
I devoured all the free podcasts, YouTube videos, blogs and vlogs I could daily with all the “Pre-Computer generation” lack of IT knowledge I could muster! (I was newly 50 years young, but sadly the product of Pre-computer generation.)
When the gurus screamed GRAB ALL THE ATTENTION YOU CAN, I obeyed, posted pictures with great content, couching my adverts in witty narrative, and thwarted attempts at seducing a willing and able Mac devotee to use our HomeAV services and home seekers and owners to use our real estate ones. The home seekers and sellers were far wearier of our intrusion due to social media overload from agents having the typical propensity of grabbing and abusing every free tool they could lay their hands on. In agents’ defence, working in a highly competitive market on a commission only basis is extremely tough.
So, I wrote CONTENT BABY, placed relevant photos in perfectly positioned places on all my Posts. I winked at my friends, beckoning them to like, adore, love my pages ... or at the very least, give us the proverbial thumbs up. Well, they did, sort of, and one (yes ONE) even upgraded their sexy iMac which paid for the petrol - for a week.
I’m a stubborn old duck. I kept on at it with all the tenacity and passion I could muster. I still had the social media gurus screaming at me to get all of us entrepreneurs to get out there on ALL the social media platforms all the time, 24/7.
Then as I hit Episode 298 of a Guru’s series on “Kick your own butt and fly” I noticed a subtle change in directive from all the gurus I followed. They had switched gear from, “DON’T DELAY, USE ALL PLATFORMS” to “OK, OK choose only 2 and FOCUS! FOCUS! Focus your energies, creative narrative, photos n vids on FB and Instagram, OR Whichever platforms blow your hair back.” Hmmm!
So, I did. Whew thank goodness only 2 giants to slay. Up the proverbial beanstalk I go to the giants’ castles in the ether sky - FB and Instagram! And thrown out of the internet heaven skyway I was. Still no elusive conversions from likes to rands. No happy Mac Customers for HomeAV, no weary home hunters for NIB Homes.
WTF? I had ploughed every bit of antiquated knowledge my 80’s degree in psychology and communication had paved for my career in sales, my passion for research and improvement, my desperate desire to take our businesses to the next level and all I was getting were hundreds of empty likes. And probable annoyance from my social media friends who just wanted to see me happy, sad, celebrating, commiserating, drunk, sober, dancing on ceilings or going to a braai after church.
“Ah, (eureka moment!) the bloody algorithms changed”, screamed the social media gurus. They changed their pitch again from “CAPITALIZE ON 2 FREE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS” to “You need to at least throw a couple of shekels into the mix and BOOST your ads to your target market of choice.”
Aaaaah - the money hook. (And ironically the algorithm shift occurred at the very same time that Mr Z himself was hauled into Congress to answer allegations of dissemination of personal information. Hmmm).
Whew easy as that. I had managed to squeeze a few rands into my paralyzed gold card and easy peasy lemon squeezy I boosted my ads. Here’s the moment of truth. Yes, I got loads of likes. 368 to be exact. But not one conversion to a happy customer who had parted with a single Rand for a new Mac or a happy, new home.
Perplexed, bewildered and feeling somewhat like a jilted lover (I am a lover of marketing and sales), I decided to employ a PI to investigate what the hell was going on. ME. No google analytics, no fancy bots analyzing data and spewing results at me I didn’t understand. Just me - wading through the profiles of every nameless, non-customer, non-client FB promised me.
OMW not on my way! OH MY WORD. I have been cuckolded. My paid for target market is none other than an arbitrary bunch of kids, and a mish mash of bored adults belonging to a group who encourage each other to belong to a group called .... you guessed it LIKE MY PAGE.
Aaaaargh. And there he was in the background - my super smart, sexy jock nerd, maths loving, ex IT specialist boyfriend, whispering, cajoling, advising, with hands up in the air, in rollie-eyed exasperation. “LYNDS” he would implore, “Social media is exactly that – IT IS SOCIAL. It is not for commercial use. You are wasting your time.” Bah humbug he would eventually growl - you are wasting your time, my Bug! (Probably stopped affectionately calling me BUG because that’s what I was ..... bugging him).
I always wondered how our use of social media could be free. Now we know it’s not. It’s a gargantuan gatherer of our personal data for dissemination purposes. Yes, the Kings of Ether gather our data, freely with permission, because we use it for free, to disseminate to advertisers, and others, AT A PRICE. PERIOD.
So, I’ve learned. Should I have listened? NAH it’s been the most interesting and exciting learning curve I have ever had the good fortune to climb up and gently land on the other side of. Thank Goodness for my rather well-cushioned, middle-aged derrière! It didn’t cost me more than a gap on my gold card and thousands of hours of free learning on the net.
Social Media is what it is. SOCIAL. It’s a platform to get and give free attention, welcome or not. A platform for sharing, caring, edification and connection. It is also a platform for sharing, TMI, too much exposure and potential predation, bullying, ugliness and disconnection.
So, the culmination of my 2017-year long journey into the social media world of marketing is this. If I want to truly put our businesses on the map, target the right audiences and market our goods and services honestly and productively, I had best pay to get our websites updated, optimized and relevant, pay to get an expert to market our companies professionally, and pay to get our businesses profitable. (Zy and Ty are up for this challenge!)
Lesson Learned - there is no such thing as a free lunch, my dears!