Podcast: Social media creates a 'paranoia of omission'
The following is the latest in our Beyond the Hype podcast series. For this segment, I sat down with Bob Maness, Vice President, Marketing, for Pillar Data Systems, an LP&P client, to discuss the evolution and incorporation of social media into B2B marketing efforts. Bob believes that paranoia, fear and omission too often lead to me-too marketing and confusion.
Our conversation kicks off with Bob discussing how the paranoia of omission can lead to four challenges and how they can further hinder your efforts at differentiating your company, products and services. The four challenges Bob discusses are:
- over-complication
- constant fiddling and tweaking of the message
- fuzziness from what makes you different, and
- issues with perception
From there Bob goes on to discuss what he does both formally and informally to help focus on differentiation. As Bob mentions, what marketers want to do is make their efforts positive, but by complicating processes they end up overworking tasks and activities. Bob goes on to talk about how marketers need to look outside the box both literally and figuratively and tap their networks both inside and outside their respective markets. This is one way that social media continues to drive the 1:1 marketing efforts and to help make his marketing efforts successful without large, formal programs and budgets.
Bob concludes part one by discussing how the fear of thinking prevents us from going through any process to get to the obvious. More often than not, he knows his efforts will be successful when someone says, “Why didn’t I think of that?” It’s the obvious, simple and uncomplicated that lets you know when you have stated something of value.
This is part one of a twopart discussion. In part two, I talk to Bob about how to effectively measure your social media and marketing efforts.
We hope you will enjoy this podcast. And, of course, we would love to get your feedback on this subject here.
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