Categories: Articles

Is Social Media Marketing A Faith Based Initiative?

My brain is still melting from yesterday. One of our clients at Twist Image is iPerceptions. They provide attitudinal analytic solutions for Websites. Or, stated more clearly, they help Websites understand not just what people are doing, but why they are doing it. Beyond the web development Twist Image does for iPerceptions, I’ve managed to become quite friendly with their management, and was honoured when they asked me to be on the iPercerptions Advisory Committee.

The first meeting took place yesterday, and the group also includes people like Bryan Eisenberg from Future Now and co-author of the brilliant books, Call To Action and Waiting For Your Cat To Bark, Avinash Kaushik who Blogs at Ocam’s Razor, and is the Analytics Evangelist for Google and author of Web Analytics – An Hour A Day, Alex Lowy known for his book and theory on the 2 x 2 Matrix, co-author of Digital Capital and author of the recently released book, No Problem, and our group is rounded out by two equally impressive business brains: Dr. Antonio Ciampi PhD and Nicholas Coutts.

During the lunch break we began a discussion around the power of Blogging and its ability to build one’s Personal Brand. Avinash had a very unique perspective on what Blogging, Social Media and even giving away free Web tools (like Google) does for business. He described them all as “faith based initiatives.”

I really liked that.

In this day and age, Marketers need to be looking at these faith based initiatives. We need the ability to understand and build the trust economy with our consumers. We need to believe that the results of Blogging, Social Media and giving away free tools will be more loyalty, which will build community and will bring the sales. Google is giving away Google Analytics in hopes that a trust community will be established, and should your Website desire, that you will consider purchasing Google AdWords or other products from Google because of how they helped your business grow (I know there are also hordes of people who think Google is up to no good with all of this analytical info… we’ll have to wait and see).

He further theorized that the main reasons companies have a hard time Blogging is because they can’t directly equate it back to immediate results. I started jamming with him on this idea. Corporations tend to look at Social Media and try to match the model with their traditional communications strategies. It’s definitely not the “comparing apples to apples” scenario. Avinash then went on to say that the main issues companies are struggling with – when it comes to Social Media – is that their business models are always based on what the cost is, instead of looking at the value.

That was my a-ha moment of the day.

Marketers: are you looking at the cost… or are you looking at the value?

That’s a big question to think about this weekend.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.