3 Most Challenging Aspects Of Social Media Marketing

Marketing in the distributed web takes a completely new set of skills than traditional business marketing.  We have been conduction a poll asking our audience (almost 1,000 on LinkedIn)of business owners and senior executives “What the most challenging aspect of implementing a social media marketing program is?”.

Here are some results:

Most Challenging Aspects Of Social Media Marketing

Unscientific LinkedIn Poll

By far, “strategy for a campaign” is the most challenging. Not surprising since we have so much information coming at us all the time and new ideas, techniques and media options emerge every day. I also suspect that many are confused between social media marketing and interactive marketing in general (the emerging distributed web).

Second runner up is content creation and distribution. Most companies are not set up to be publishers. They don’t have the skill set or workflow and systems to do it. In the distributed web, becoming and information publisher and educator in your market are critical to success.

The third biggest challenge to implement a social media program is time to implement. This is scary stuff for executives already overwhelmed with things they need to do just to get their current tasks done.

Company Size

We also looked at these same variables by company size and it sheds more light on this subject.

Most Challenging Aspects Of Social Media Marketing

By Business Size

Unscientific LinkedIn Poll

Larger organizations appear to be more focused on understanding the strategy and how it fits the overall marketing communications effort. This makes sense since there is more structure and moving pieces in a larger enterprise. Larger organizations also do not appear to have as much of a concern with the content piece of social media marketing as does smaller businesses where resources and skill sets are more limited.

Social Media Challenges By Age

Interestingly, we also looked at these same variables by age.

Most Challenging Aspects Of Social Media Marketing

By Age of Respondent

Unscientific LinkedIn Poll

Business owners and executives in the “middle” of a career seem to focus on strategy.  Younger respondents have the most concern about content development and distribution. Possibly because they don’t have the experience, contacts or perspective yet to consistently create content.  Older professionals find the time issue hardest to handle. This new marketing world requires a time commitment and attention that they are not used to.

In our judgment, this all points to an idea we have been playing with (and testing in our GenNext Media Labs) over the past year. We created a system to abstract away the complexity of implementing a social media program. Not that our “system” is easy, because the fact is doing social media marketing right is not easy and requires more time and attention than traditional forms of marketing. Our solution to these challenges is a process with, work flow and organization businesses of any size can understand and implement.

The key, however basic, is to have a plan using a proven set of actions to start with so your organization doesn’t get trapped. Look at businesses that you think are doing it right and model what they are doing.  Follow what is working and then expand once you get started.

We launch social media marketing programs for companies large and small using a proven template of content, distribution, and a website/blog that all works together to have an impact. The focus is getting some level of leads and/or traffic to our sites quickly. It’s amazing how much time people find to do things once they experience some success.

If you have not responded to the survey, please go to this link and tell us what you think…most challenging aspects of social media marketing