MELISSA MACK
SOCIAL media is tweeting around the globe, yet marketing experts are conflicted over whether it has any real clout for advertisers.
UniSA's marketing science professor Byron Sharp claims the average tweet reaches just 12 people, while Hughes PR's digital media consultant Michelle Prak says the reach is into the thousands.
Brands with successful campaigns such as Old Spice or Ford in the US have driven the hype surrounding social media.
But Sharp repeats his reservations.
"Just because successful companies are doing it does not make social media marketing effective," he says.
"There are a few success stories but success stories always get a lot of attention, while the many more disappointing case studies are swept under the carpet.
"There are plenty of social media marketing zealots, who say ridiculous things like TV advertising is dead."
Sharp runs UniSA's Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, which is researching the reach of social media.
He describes social media as "just another fashion trend".
"Marketing science tells us that brands need to reach all category buyers over and over.
"This is what makes media like TV so valuable, it is vast and fast -- delivering a lot of reach quickly, at low cost per contact."
But social media is highly fragmented making it impossible for a campaign to be guaranteed reach, Sharp says.
"We just have to pray that we go viral. Few brands have more than one million Facebook fans globally."
He says if marketers look at the numbers they would see the social media reach is tiny.
"Also we know very little about how viewers consume advertisements within social media."
Sharp says businesses should include social media in their research budgets to learn rather than build their brands.
"It can only be justified from a business perspective if we are using it purely to learn about this new media, so that we know what it might be useful for our brand in the future, if at all."
On the other side, Hughes PR's Prak says platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are well beyond the "fad" phase.
"When you look at Facebook it's been around since 2006 and has only shown growth and is linked and embedded in all sorts of websites," she says.
"But you shouldn't do it because it's popular. I look at what clients are trying to achieve and where their target market is. It might not be on Facebook."
Prak also disagrees that social media has a limited reach.
"I think the reach is what has excited marketers using those platforms.
"Online and social media platforms are even easier to measure reach (than traditional methods) and you can see some fantastic numbers out there in the thousands or even millions of views."
Research has yet to "drill down and see what the viewers are doing after they see those messages".
Prak says a great strategy and plan is needed to back any social media use.
"It can be really effective with brand awareness and really effective with community engagement if you are doing it in the right way.
"You just need to set yourself up, building the first page with that strategy in mind."
She says social media should complement existing media strategies rather than replace them.
"I think another thing some people misunderstand is that social media needs to replace something else in the marketing mix, but really it needs to support what you are doing."
One Hughes PR client that she offers as a successful user of social media is the Adelaide Hills producer Beerenberg, with its range of jams and sauces.
Beerenberg launched a new website last year using a blog, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in its campaign.
Since starting the strategy, Prak says sales for the company have continued to rise while website hits have also increased through use of social media.
She says social media will become more embedded and "marketers needed to educate themselves now".
"It means marketers need to pay even more attention to social media and my advice is any marketers need to have their own personal profile to build their own knowledge and even their own brand."
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How Brands Grow - Knowledge Works lecture 2010 at UniSAby UniSouthAustralia2,876 views
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