The answer's Facebook. What's the question?

It would seem that nowadays the must have for any business today is a Twitter account, a Facebook page, some interesting stuff to do with OCR codes or even an app.

 It is all eerily reminiscent of the early days of the internet in the fag end days of the dot com bubble when every business would jump and down and demand a website even though at that time few could explain what they actually wanted a website for. It was as if the why didn’t matter, it was just enough to have one to show to the world that it was hip and modern and down there with kids. 

And the same is happening today with social media. Does anyone ever ask why?

I know that we now live in a mobile, always on, age. And I also know that billions of people now access the internet, Facebook reaches more than 1 billion people and that in a few years’ time smartphones and Tablets will ensure that the reach of both is even greater, assuming that the technology has not been superseded before then.

But the global reach of these technologies, platforms and devices is no excuse to abandon the principles of effective marketing strategy.

I read recently that P&G’s man in charge of brands recently urged marketers to look beyond the pipes and plumbing of digital and social media, the new communication eco-system, and instead continue to build brands ‘…with campaigns that matter, that make people think, feel and laugh…we have the chance to do all of those things now in a way that is so much more exciting than we did before’.

In other words return to basics. And focus less on the means and more on the objective and the result.

But it sometimes seems that when it comes to all things digital, social media and technology, businesses get seduced by all this stuff and abandon the rigour previously shown when developing their communication plans. It feels like businesses should be on these platforms just because they are there. But unless the rigour is applied and the graft work done, it will not be a case of ‘build it and they will come’.

Instead I am going to suggest we get back to basics and before deciding that the answer is Facebook no matter the question, we stop and ask ourselves:

·        -  Who are we trying to reach?

·        - What are we trying to achieve?

·         - How do they buy?

·         - What do we want to say?

·         - How will we engage them?

·         - Which channels will we use, where and when?

And then and only then, when we know have gone back to putting the consumer at the heart of our thinking and not the channel, will we know whether Facebook is the right answer.

So before rushing headlong into the exciting new world of glitzy technology and with it media channels, I invite you to pause, reflect and consider. Think of this new world like dancing down the local disco or club, dependent on your generation. There few of us would rush headlong onto the dance floor. Instead we would mingle around the edges, eyeing up what was going on, who was dancing, listening to the music. And then when we were ready, when we felt up to speed with the dancers and the music, and only then, would we take our first tentative steps onto the dance floor and away we would go. The parallels are uncanny.

So what strategy have you adopted or are you adopting? A headlong rush into this new world or a more careful, considered entry conforming fully to the rigorous principles of a proper communications planning exercise? And how did that work out?

I know which would be my approach.