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Social Marketing is Like Showing Up Naked to a Cocktail Party

July 7, 2008 by Kathryn Hendershot 12 Comments

If there’s one term that you must keep in mind when you decide to engage in Social Marketing, it would have to be TRANSPARENCY!

Social media is like a cocktail party.  If you want to use social media to market your business, you’d better be prepared to show up naked.  Imagine if you attended a cocktail party naked. The moment you walk in, everyone will know if you’ve been working out.  Hitting the gym without putting forth effort isn’t enough to get your body into “look great naked” shape.the role of transparency in social media marketing

My mother has been on a life long quest to stay thin without breaking a sweat.  When years of low calorie dieting stopped working, she joined Curves. Her goal was to lose weight without breaking a sweat.  After three months, she complained that she had only lost 10 pounds .  A friend of mine had lost a significant amount of weight in a similar time frame thanks to Curves, so I was curious.  What was my friend doing that my mother wasn’t.  I asked my mother to describe her workout.  She described a series of exercise machines placed in a circle. My mother then described the area between each machine as a “resting station.”  My mother  shared that she would work out on a machine and then rest for 5 minutes in the “resting station.”  Later, I asked my friend about the resting stations.  She was puzzled.  There weren’t any resting station at the Curves where she worked out.  After I described what my mother had told me, my friend broke out in uproarious laughter.  “No wonder your mother isn’t losing weight.  Those aren’t resting stations!  That’s where you’re supposed to march in place to keep your heart rate up!”

My mother learned the hard way that she couldn’t just show up at Curves and get into shape.

Just as it’s not enough to just “show up” at the gym, you can’t expect to just “show up” on social media and get great results.

social media marketing is not just another form of word of mouth advertisingMany business owners make the mistake of thinking that social media is just word of mouth marketing on steroids. It’s not.

Word of mouth marketing is the effortless, free promotion so many business owners crave.  Those businesses that have achieved it will attest that:

  • word of mouth marketing is not effortless
  • word of mouth marketing is not “free”
  • word of mouth marketing doesn’t just “happen.”

Most importantly, smart business owners know that word of mouth marketing is not a comprehensive marketing strategy.

To use my mother’s experience with Curves, word of mouth marketing is what happens in the areas my mother described as “resting stations.”   Each exercise machine represents a different aspect of your marketing.  Your website is one station.  Your newsletter is another.  Your social media activity is yet another.  In between each of these stations is where word of mouth comes in.

Word of mouth marketing happens when instead of resting – you’re striving to improve your customer’s experience.

Can you lose weight at Curves by just using the machines?    My mother demonstrated that it’s possible.  However, my mother wasn’t willing to spend years trying to reach her 30 pound weight loss goal.  Meanwhile, when my friend combined the machines and aerobic exercise in between, she was able to reach her goal weight in months instead of years.

 

Word of mouth is not a marketing strategyWord-of-mouth is not a marketing strategy.

Word of mouth marketing is when your customers tell their family and friends about your business.  This kind of talking about products and services has been going on since the beginning of time. Anyone trying to sell on you the fact that this is “new” or “revolutionary” has the salesman’s hat firmly in place. Trying to package social media as word of mouth marketing is a prime example of SSDM (Same Shit Different Medium).

So, on one side of the equation, you have people congregating on social media sites. What’s happening online is no different than what’s been going on in “real time” for centuries.

On the other side of the social marketing equation, you have businesses. These businesses want to grab a piece of the social marketing action. They want to insert their products into the conversations.  Businesses are now able to monitor these conversations.

These conversations have been going on since the beginning of time. Ancient cavemen would gather around the fire and talk to each other.  I’m sure one caveman would brag about his hunting prowess. For example, Og would talk about the wood he used to make his spear.  He would remind other around the fire that his spear is the one that killed the Mastodon they were eating.  The conversation would then turn to how others who used other types of wood hadn’t survived the hunt. Og had brought down the beast while the others had ended up as Mastodon toe jam.

There’s little difference between those “informal” social conversations and the conversations happening on social media.  The only remarkable difference is  the ancient conversations left little evidence of what was said.   Today’s social media conversations are literally etched in stone, leaving a trail that anyone can follow.

Which brings us back to the admonition offered at the beginning of this post. If the name of the game is Social Media Marketing, then one of the rules of the game is transparency.

If you enter this game with the expectation of privacy, think again.

If you’re going to show up at the cocktail party naked, be prepared.   If you’re going to show up flabby and out of shape, at least don’t try to tell people that you’ve been hitting the gym regularly.

Filed Under: Beyond Marketing Tagged With: Advertising, Customer Service, marketing campaign, PR, social marketing, social networks, transparency, word of mouth advertising

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Lord Matt says

    July 9, 2008 at 3:32 am

    You raise very many good points not least of all that so many companies fail to “get it” when it comes to this whole new way of interacting with the market place. Once it was tell the customers what to buy then it was show the customer what to buy but now it is ask the customer what they want to buy – each change looses those unable to change with the flow. Innovators fall behind and drop off the map.

    Lord Matts last blog post..Massive Exploit in Multiple Social Media Systems

    Reply
  2. Step-by-Step Affiliate Marketing says

    July 9, 2008 at 2:16 pm

    Great post. I think that word-of mouth is very scary and this should be the main concern of any marketer on any level and especially with how small the world has gotten due to the Internet and Web 2.0. My cousin single handidly, russled up 45 people to ban Best Buy because they screwed her on a return and these people sent Best Buy goodbye letters and let them know that they will no longer shop there. This is just a simple example of how word-of-mouth can affect even the largest of corps.
    Thank you!

    Reply
  3. Say It So They Buy It says

    June 20, 2009 at 5:45 pm

    Businesses are learning: stay transparent or expect to feel the rath of your public. But those who learn how to use it can explode their effectiveness. I’m working now with a progress religious foundation which knows that it needs to get its message out to where the people are (and not expect the people to come to them). Ahhhh, progress!

    Charlie Seymour Jr
    http://twitter.com/UltimateWAHDads

    Reply
  4. Ashleigh March says

    November 5, 2021 at 3:13 am

    marketing legend

    Reply
  5. Fitz Gibbon says

    November 25, 2021 at 7:48 am

    Wow! I’ve found a blog from where can get helpful information concerning my business.

    Reply
  6. dannyallan says

    January 6, 2022 at 12:47 am

    I emailed this web site post page to all my associates.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Practical Blogging » Blog Archive » links for 2008-07-09 says:
    July 8, 2008 at 11:31 pm

    […] Social Marketing is Like Showing Up Naked to a Cocktail Party | Beyond Niche Marketing (tags: social media ethics transparency wom) […]

    Reply
  2. links for 2008-07-11 | Niche Marketing and Social Media says:
    July 11, 2008 at 2:34 am

    […] Social Marketing is Like Showing Up Naked to a Cocktail Party | Beyond Niche Marketing Right on mark! Social marketing is supposed to be honest public reviews. Not artificially supplied promotion. (tags: social-marketing transparency) Related Posts3 Simple Tips For A Search Engine Friendly BlogBloggers who are interested in building high traffic to their blog and maintaining a successful blog…Link Building Campaign – Reciprocal Linking Using TrackbackImage via Wikipedia What is a Trackback ? A Trackback is one of three types of Linkbacks, …Link Building Campaign – Using Do Follow Social Bookmarking I’m sure most of you bloggers out there are familiar with social bookmarking sites. Social bookmark…Today in SEO – 12 May 2008links for 2008-06-25 SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “links for 2008-07-11”, url: “http://dittorahmat.com/links-for-2008-07-11” });If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! Posted under Daily Reading | To receive more update on Daily Reading article, please consider subscribing to my RSS feed […]

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  3. Sex Sells - But You Already Knew That : Virtual Impax says:
    July 26, 2008 at 3:33 pm

    […] wandered into a cocktail party dressed in the same attired as the woman in the Bluefly ads. (a.k.a. Naked at a Cocktail Party) Besides, if the ad is a FAKE then why, oh why doesn’t BMW sue the dirty bastards who are […]

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  4. Selling the “Magic” of Social Media says:
    March 16, 2009 at 11:34 am

    […] What’s worse, if you have something to HIDE in your business then you’ll soon discover that Social Marketing is Like Showing Up Naked to a Cocktail Party. […]

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  5. Life and Death of a Brand: The Tiger Woods Story – Beyond Niche Marketing says:
    December 11, 2009 at 11:39 am

    […] ago, I wrote the post Social Marketing is Like Showing Up Naked to a Cocktail Party which says, Launching a social marketing campaign is like showing up naked to a cocktail party. If […]

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  6. Brand Development Process - Beyond Niche Marketing says:
    September 9, 2021 at 3:28 pm

    […] the video, Gary definitely calls for transparency in social marketing as part of the brand development process.  It’s for this reason that he insists that passion […]

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