Social Media (for marketers) is not a communications vehicle.
As you may have heard, I was invited to the awesome state of Vermont by Rich Nadworny last week to give a talk at the Burlington Social Media Breakfast. Rich was an amazing host and arranged to have me and my family stay the Trapp Family Lodge which was absolutely incredible.

For those of you who are as ignorant as I am, the Trapp Family are the real family that the Sound of Music was based on. This lodge which is actually a resort has beautiful rooms, a great restaurant, acres of cross country ski trails and an awesome indoor pool with a rock-climbing area. We had a blast there and wound up spending most of the weekend at the lodge as there was so much to do. Huge thanks to all there for your hospitality.
I gave a presentation about our (Zeus Jones) take on social media which – you won’t be surprised to learn – we see as another place to do things for people, not another place to say things to them. It seemed to go well, the slides are below:
As the other presenter dropped out at the last minute the Q&A was extended a bit. There were a lot of good questions but the theme that appears to have generated the most debate was my assertion that I think most people aren’t really looking for a relationship with a company or brand. I said the same thing to the Burlington Free Press:
“I think the majority of people aren’t really looking to form a two-way relationship with a company. They want more tangible things like better service, better products, lower prices, more access, more availability, more recognition and so on,” he said. “I think social media is a perfect way to deliver a lot of these things.”
To clarify, I think it’s useful for people to have a relationship with real people inside companies that they do business with, but I think that most social media marketing is aimed at getting people to build relationships with the company or brand itself which IMHO is a mistake.
There were some interesting responses to this from a number of people here, here and here.

