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 Thursday, Dec 20, 2012 Marketing trends come and go, but what other “shiny object” topic has caused more debate than social media? On the one hand, recent studies cited by eMarketer show that two thirds of the U.S. internet population will belong to a social network by 2013. On the other hand, a study by Harvard Business Review showed that 29% of the 2,100 organizations surveyed felt it was difficult to see the benefit of social media for their business purposes. It’s true that with something as large, fast changing and ubiquitous as the social web there will be zealots and dissenters as well as the comfortably numb. The fact that opportunists make unsubstantiated claims as self-anointed social media experts doesn’t help matters when it comes to understanding social fact from fiction. The ease of publishing makes it nearly impossible to catalog the sheer volume of myths about social media marketing, but since this series is a preview of my NMX BusinessNext presentation, I’ll focus on the following three: Myth 1: Social Media Will Replace Search Engines Many companies create and maintain a competitive advantage by staying on top of trends. Looking at technology as well as consumer behaviors, the growth of social influence is irrefutable. The adoption of social media use on computers, tablets and mobile devices has made it a ubiquitous part of the consumer digital experience. By the year 2020, Ericsson predicts there will be over 50 billion connected devices. Between the rising growth of social media adoption, slowed growth in search usage and the integration of social into core search, surely all that connectedness means search engines will give way to social networks as primary sources of information for consumers and business buyers? Just look at Google trends for news topics and you’ll see compelling evidence of interest in “social media” eclipsing “search engines” in 2011.  Myth Busted: You can pick any stats you want to support a position. A Pew Research study reports that while social is rising fast, email and search engines are the most popular activities online. Many “social beats search” advocates feel that social and search are mutually exclusive and get caught up in generic statistics vs. what’s important to brands and marketers: the buyer and their experience with brand information discovery, consumption and engagement. Simply looking at web analytics and the touchpoints in the buyer’s journey reveals interactions with a number of channels before purchase: email, advertising, search, social, 3rd party media, referrals. Here’s a situation most people can relate to: Imagine asking friends on a social network for restaurant recommendations. Do you go to the restaurant from that or do you go to a search engine like Google or Bing to find out where the restaurant is, the hours, the menu, what it looks like and reviews? When you visit the restaurant you might check in on Foursquare and then post photos from Instagram. You might even write a review on Yelp. You may even go back to the social network where the restaurant was recommended and share what a good (or bad) suggestion it was. With B2B buyers this journey might be extended over weeks or months of information gathering, consumption and for the good stuff, sharing. Search and social work together to surface useful information to buyers and consumers. One by no means, replaces the other. Yes social is integrated with how search engines work and I don’t see that ever changing. But the act of searching is an explicit indication of intent and can drive people ready to buy to credible, useful information. You might like your friends, and they may even know your interests well, but are they really capable of making the best recommendations at the time you need them? While search engines are not perfect, 12 billion people search Google alone on a monthly basis, trusting the search results to provide useful information, 24/7. The competitive marketing advantage comes from a focus on the buyer and how they use search and social, not by focusing on one or the other. Myth 2: Social Has No ROI or is Too Difficult to Measure “We’ve been running a Twitter account for 6 months and haven’t had any sales. Social media is a waste of time.” Sound familiar? Companies have spent billions of dollars over the past 5 years and the consensus amongst many marketers is that social media has not had a direct impact on growing sales. While 9 out of 10 companies will market on the social web this year, most companies are not able to measure anything more than “engagement”. 
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