Jul 15, 2011 0
The Challenge of Apple to Social Marketers Everywhere
Try looking for blog.apple.com...
The other day, at the as-yet-unnamed Houston Social Media Club dinner, we got to talking about (what else) using social media for marketing purposes. I was reminded of that discussion checking out the new InmanNext post on Engagement by Michael McClure (that’s Mr. ProfessionalOne to you). [By the way, kudos to Chris Smith for getting InmanNext launched with its slate of writers, thinkers, and doers. Great job, Chris. I'll give you all the negativity over cocktails in San Francisco.]
Michael lays out generally solid advice, as he usually does. If you’re looking for guidance on how to use social networks generally, you could do a whole lot worse than his post. Now, Michael gives the following sage advice:
First, because success IRL is predicated heavily on the quality of the relationships you build. I won’t attempt to explain or justify this point, because I think most people know it to be true.
Second, because this same principle – the idea of success hinging on the quality of the relationships you build – is equally true in Social Media. Remember that people are people, whether online or offline.
Third, because there is a direct correlation between the quality of the relationships you have and the degree to which you successfully engage within those relationships.
For those of us who have been in or around this whole social media marketing thing over the past few years, all three points are rock solid. But on this blog, we don’t rest with rock solid conclusions — we push on into the frail forsaken frontier of foolish questions.
The foolish question of the day, then, is: What assumptions must we make in order to accept these three as rock-solid principles?
Put another way, those marketers who strongly advocate social media as the future of marketing must wrestle with, and answer, the challenge of Apple, Inc.
