[마케팅]소셜 미디어를 줄일 때다

It's Time to Cut Back on Social Media

by Dorie Clark  |  11:00 AM January 23, 2013

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/01/why_2013_is_the_year_to_cut_ba.html

I recently got back from the New Media Expo in Las Vegas. Scheduled before the massive annual CES gathering, it's a powwow for bloggers and other social media enthusiasts, early adopters who are quick to jump on board the next great thing. So imagine my surprise when I realized one of the undercurrents of the event, burbling repeatedly to the surface, was a desire to cut back on social media efforts.

That doesn't mean doing less overall or abandoning new media. But it does speak to a desire to prune and focus on the platforms that have the most impact. It's hard to say no to the crush of social media demands. During a panel I moderated with well-known blogger and tech expert Robert Scoble, he said there was no alternative to constant, ubiquitous engagement and held up a spare battery he carried for his smartphone, so he'd never run out of juice. No time to respond to tweets? Do it while you're walking down the hallway, he said. Plenty of people agree with him. One consultant friend recently chided me for not being on Pinterest or Instagram — and like her, many worry they'll fall behind if they're not hard-core super users, or if they don't get in on the ground floor. Clearly there is a first mover advantage in some cases: Chris Brogan developed a passionate following as an early blogger, and Guy Kawasaki jumped onboard Twitter and became a powerhouse there.

But as I advise my clients to do, I believe everyone needs to think about which platforms best speak to your strengths. At the New Media Expo, I also interviewed Nick Harris, head of digital marketing for Benjamin Moore. For such a visual product, literally differentiated by its color, Pinterest is a terrific platform. But for a consultant like me who traffics in ideas, blogging and tweeting make a lot more sense as investments.

In fact, we're now reaching a point where having a scattered focus could truly be deleterious to your goals, because you're only able to half-engage or create mediocre content. Marcy Massura of Weber Shandwick, who was on another panel with me, commented that "presence means nothing." Indeed, if you have a Twitter profile with 35 followers, or a MySpace page that hasn't been touched since 2007, it often looks worse than having nothing at all. (Personally, I just KO'd my Foursquare account.)

It's become increasingly clear that with the proliferation of new platforms, no person or company can become the master of them all. Nor should they. The harder decision is figuring out which ones you should prioritize — or jettison. Establishing ROI has always been the holy grail of social media. We may still have a ways to go before we can quantify its objective, dollars-and-cents impact (if you read about something on Facebook, and then saw a tweet, and then went to the mall to buy it, does it count?). But even anecdotally, you probably have some good operating theories. For instance, if you target women, Pinterest is a great bet; if it's males, Google+ is currently their stomping ground. And as I've written about here on HBR.org, blogging is the best way to demonstrate true content mastery and thought leadership.

The "best" platforms will be different for every person or brand. But in 2013, think hard about how you can cut back, so you can focus on what matters.

요약

 라스베가스에서 했던 뉴미디어 엑스포를 다녀온 필자는 소셜 미디어에 대한 노력을 줄이려는 움직임에 대해 놀랐다. 소셜 미디어에 대한 것을 완전히 그만 두라는 것이 아니라 가장 영향을 끼치고 있는 플랫폼에 초점을 두지 말라는 것이다. 블로거이자 기술 전문가 Robert Scoble는 지속적이고, 어디에서나 참여할 수 있는 소셜 미디어를 대체할 수 있는 것은 없다고 말했다. 

  그러나 어떤 플랫폼이 당신의 강점을 나타내기에 가장 좋은 지 생각할 필요가 있다. Benjamin Moore의 디지털 마케팅 부장 Nick Harris는 시각적인 제품에 있어서 Pinterest가 좋은 플랫폼이고, 아이디어를 교환하기를 좋아하는 이들에게는 블로그나 트위터가 좋다고 했다. 사실, 우리는 반밖에 참여하고 있지 않거나 썩 좋지 않은 콘텐츠를 만들기 때문에 목표를 달성하는 데 방해가 될 수 있는 곳에 접근하고 있다. Weber Shandwick의  Marcy Massura는 트위터 팔로어가 35명이거나 2007년 이후로 한번도 MySpace 페이지를 건들지 않았다면 없는 것보다 못하다고 했다. 

 새로운 플랫폼의 확산과 함께 누구나 전문가가 될 수 없다는 것은 점점 명백해지고 있다. 어떤 플랫폼을 우선시해야 하는지 버려야 하는지 결정하는 것은 더 어렵다. 그러나 당신은 아마도 좋은 운영 이론을 가지고 있을지도 모른다. 여성을 대상으로 한다면, Pinterest가 좋고, 남성을 대상으로 한다면, 구글이 좋다. 

"최고의" 플랫폼은 모든 사람이나 브랜드마다 다를 것이다. 그러나 2013년에는 얼마나 당신이 절감할 수 있는지 더 생각해 보아라. 그러면 어떤 문제에 초점을 맞출 수 있다.