I was driving into Pittsburgh today to meet with a couple of clients and I was on the phone with one of my friends who told me that he had been talking with a local ad agency about social media. Before I cut to the chase, the agency is a major player in Pittsburgh but by no means a social media player.
This may help with what he said next. He goes on to tell me that the agency told him that social media is not effective and pretty much a flash in the pan type of thing. he goes on to say that a lot of hype surrounded it early on, but after the hype, there is not much there. As I’m listening to him the opinion of the agency all of a sudden started to sound more like his opinion and it was at this point that I cut him off.
I told him that I’m not going to sit here and defend it, but I will say that you are both wrong. Which got me thinking about the intrinsic value of it all. Are they right? Is this all bullshit?
It’s as simple as this.
The intrinsic properties of social media lie in the conversations; and those conversations depend only on that thing; the conversation. What happens after that is up to you and the person that you’re having the conversation with.
There.
Direct Marketing Observations 
Pretty interesting. I find myself having this conversation more and more with people, and with varying degrees of hostility toward the “hey, I think social media is valuable” side.
But the bottom line for me always comes to this: there are people, with wallets and mouths, on social media. Would you ignore this if you replaced “social media” with anything else?
There are people, with wallets and mouths, watching TV.
There are people, with wallets and mouths, listening to radio.
There are people, with wallets and mouths, reading magazines.
There are people, with wallets and mouths, using social media.
Isn’t it worth it to be there with them, wherever the people are?
@Andrew Like asking what the ROI of a telephone is…
Simple and nice. Not only social media and in every business its all about the relationships we build and the base to this is obviously ‘the conversation’.
@sean and it’s what you do with that relationship that determines everything!