Are you asking the right questions about social media?

When we ask marketing executives what changes they’re making over the next year, we often hear they’re going to increase their investment in social media. It has almost become a knee-jerk response that reminds us of when companies were rushing to put themselves on the Internet without thinking how their customers will interact with their websites. Or when Facebook began to achieve prominence, everyone had to have their company on the platform.

Now, social media has come to mean a variety of platforms that include Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter and more. Companies selling social media services have proliferated as have services that will find more followers for anybody’s social sites. But do we know why we’re constantly seeking followers and whether we’re sending the right message to them? Social media doesn’t tell us. It only broadcasts and, for the most part, all we hear is when customers are angry. 

Comedian and movie producer, Judd Apatow does a very funny bit that asks whether, before the advent of social media, if we would have sent endless photos of ourselves, the food we eat or the products we buy and recommend to several thousand of our best friends? It’s no wonder that actual engagement rates are extraordinarily low. Three percent is considered high and 1% is commonplace. So, it’s reasonable to ask what is the value of social media and is it telling you anything meaningful about your customers? Or, is it merely no better than handing out thousands of brochures without knowing who’s reading them?

There are 11 questions we decided to ask about social media and, while we were at it, ask the same of our platform, Oomiji. We think the answers provide some insights to the questions above as well as make a case that we’re on the right track with a platform that really can make a difference.

Now, before you go off and cancel all your social media, we do think there’s a use for it…a tactical use, one that helps you gather and direct people to your database and enables you to deliver the most popular messaging, assuming you know what that is. What we’ve done with Oomiji is to make it into a strategic tool that enables you to learn your customers’ needs and desires  and then create a compelling offer to address them.

 If you’d like to see a demo of how Oomiji works, let us know!