Businesses are seeing the opportunity that social media marketing can deliver.

But have they missed the point entirely?

The reason that social media is different from other marketing vehicles including outdoor advertising, print, radio and direct mail is that it offers a ‘social’ element .

Businesses who have mastered the ‘social’ in social media are few and far between. I am however quite confident that they are seeing the highest returns on this marketing vehicle.

While it is true that social media websites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg and Twitter create the opportunity to promote a business, that is not news. The real news here is that, used strategically, these social media sites provide businesses with the privelege to engage with their customers. An opportunity that can provide a business with invaluable insight into how their customers feel about their products or services, their brand and virtually anything else the business wants or needs to know.

Mack Collier at Marketing Profs makes an excellent point on this topic with his article Broadcasting with ‘Social’ Media:

If you are using social sites and tools as one-way channels to promote your content, you aren’t practicing social media, you are in broadcast media.

Readers’ comments and Mack’s subsequent reply, taken from a seriously long and intense string of commentary on this intriguing article, demonstrate the point about the value of the ‘social’ in social media:

Great post, Mack. I wish more experts and media would engage with the rest of us and I would hope that they would spread the word about those benefits to others. Don’t you think that @zappos gets much more benefit from Twitter than @nytimes who just uses it to send out links to articles?…Posted by: Cara Keithley 06.23.08
This goes back to the whole “talk WITH us and not AT us” idea that made social media different…If folks aren’t willing to be a part of the conversation then why should we care what they have to say? Posted by: Jennifer Navarrete 06.23.08
…As I’ve said, it’s not of my business how people use Twitter or blogs or social sites. Where it becomes my business is when I have to undo misconceptions that clients have about how to ‘properly’ use social media, based on what they’ve seen or been told by others ‘using’ social media. Posted by: mack collier 06.24.08

There are no rules about how social media websites should be used by businesses but the real point of difference that this marketing vehicle offers to a business is the opportunity to be social with customers.

Isn’t that why businesses spend enormous sums of money on trade shows, market research, public relations, sales representatives, networking, events and much much more?

To be social with customers?

Related post: Social Media – Effective Marketing for the Mainstream