When I was in school, I had a really bad habit of getting bored. If I wasn’t challenged or things became stale, I stopped caring about the class. Obviously, I didn’t do so well in high school and it wasn’t until I reached college, where I could explore different things, that my grades started to get better.

The habit hasn’t died, I still get “bored” easily. Instead nowadays, when I feel myself getting bored, I try to figure out why I’m bored. I look at what I’m doing and figure out if it’s become stale or is there more? Maybe I’ve only been scratching the surface, and it’s time to look deeper or out. Focus is good, but extreme focus means you miss out on a lot.

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This is what’s happening with social media. It’s not that social media itself is boring. Marketing that is personal, community based, and ever-changing can hardly be considered boring. What is boring, however, is the idea that social media is game changing, the future, or some kind of holy grail. The idea that social media, alone, will solve your every marketing problem.

To marketers that feel this way, I say “grow up”. Social media is one tool of many. Focusing on one aspect of marketing is like building a house with just a nail.

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People Want More

Tamar, a good friend of mine, wrote a post titled “Is Social Media Becoming Boring?“. It’s interesting what she says about social media and people’s want for “more”. She uses a a chart to show that people want social media.

The problem is, that the chart is a little misleading. Look at the terms she compares against each other. “Social Media” versus “Search Engine Optimization”. Let’s clarify the chart a little more. Most people aren’t going to write or search for “Search Engine Optimization”, they’ll look for “SEO”. Let’s recreate the chart and see what happens.

Well that’s drastically different than what we thought. Suddenly, social media doesn’t seem to be as earth shattering as we thought.

The Problems with Social Media

This post may seem like I don’t like social media, but that can’t be further from the truth. Instead, I’ve just identified major concerns with social media and am working hard to solve them. Social media is seductive, it promises to answer problems without huge costs and it’s being marketed by people that are both good at building excitement and convincing evangelist.

The one thing I’ve learned from this whole thing of social media marketing, is that most marketers are great at marketing social media. When you ask 99%, “What now?” – “How does this help my bottom line?” there’s hardly an answer.

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So here are my concerns with social media:

• No way to effectively track social media success…
• The echo chamber: If I hear “build a community” one more time…
• Singular focus, it’s as if nothing other than social media exists…
• The arrogance – social media is not a cure all for marketing…
• Inconsistent results – when people are involved, optimization can only go so far…
• Little growth in standards and regulations…
• Lack of academic research and theory…

Why I’m Not Worried…

I’m not worried because social media is still young. It has time to grow. As long as it doesn’t crush itself from the expectations people have create for the marketing discipline, it will exists for a long time.

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Now What?

The reason I titled this article “Good Marketers Don’t Stand Still” is because I wanted to make sure people understand that growth and innovation means always moving and looking for new things. It’s almost ironic that most social media marketers will tell you to be innovative and try new things, but when you decide that it’s time to try something other than social media (maybe mobile marketing?) they get flustered.

I wrote a few weeks ago that this blog will be changing and that I’ll be focusing on more broader marketing ideas and theories – social media is going to be only a single part of the marketing toolset.

Tamar quotes David Armano (another person I respect) in her blog post:

So, not unlike what we’ve seen in the past, there is bound to be a shakeout, a quest for better metrics and ROI models (digital still deals with this today) but there is one thing I am certain of. The true believers who stuck with the Web even when the bubble burst became the people you wanted to work with. If there is a shakeout in the social space, the same will happen. The true believers will remain, while others flock to the next hot field.(Bolded by Samir for emphasis)

I usually agree with almost everything David says, but this time I’m torn to disagree. The true believers remaining is reminiscent of print magazines and newspapers unwilling to adapt and change. Resisting change and disregarding new shifts in thinking would be counter-productive.

Change doesn’t need to be huge, it doesn’t need to be a whole new marketing platform. It can be simple, it can be a change in how we look at social media. It can be a rethinking of social media as a standalone marketing platform, to one that requires other disciplines to work. The true power of social media marketing comes alive when it’s integrated with display advertising and search engine optimization.

For most marketers that spells doom. The idea that not only do you have to understand social media (a complex system of sociology, psychology, and anthropology) but also online advertising, search engine optimization, and analytics.

Are You Bored?

So am I bored of social media? Sure. Do I want to work with a social media strategist? No. I want to work with people that understand that online marketing takes integration. Singular focus can hurt and keep you from growing.

Good marketers don’t stand still, we continually look for what’s new. While others are still trying to figuring out how to build a Facebook page, we’ve already realized that our resources can be better spent elsewhere. We continually ask the question “Why” and drive to find an answer. We don’t resist change, instead we welcome it and make our marketing better.

So what do you think? Is social media falling apart? Is it fine the way it is? Will you be focusing specifically on social media or are you working to expand your interests?