Marketing Mecca and Business Panacea?

I question the suggestion, that putting your business face on Facebook and tweeting away on Twitter, are truly the marketing meccas or business panaceas they’re made out to be. I’m hearing that argument more and more at conferences now days.

Last year I heard several speakers lecture to audiences on using Facebook, yet I couldn’t find any of those speakers on Facebook. Hmm, aren’t we all experts with the Internet! This year I’m hearing another group of people lecture on using Facebook and Twitter to market products, support customers, to manage, and to inform. People seem to believe these newly discovered sites (to them anyway) are the meeting place for all good things and magic elixir for curing all.

I have used Facebook for a couple years now and thought it had potential at first, but now I hide more and more "friends" because they write too much and what they post is junk. For a while, I found Facebook useful to keep up with business activities, but that got lost in comments about walking the dog or boating on the lake.

Despite the daily chatter of useless information, I see potential, but still question that potential as it is presented. I’m starting to get lost in scattered and poorly edited text, plus finding up to date information… Is the up to date information on their website, their blog, their Facebook, their Twitter, their answering machine, or where? I have seen examples of where it’s at none of the above. I guess it is difficult to manage communications when there are so many ways.

Twitter was great for getting the word out on Iran, but perhaps that was a unique case. I don’t use Twitter because I’m flooded with communications already and would probably drop tweeters like I am hiding Facebook friends. Perhaps we’re already over burdened with communications… we’ve got land lines, cell phones, email, text messages, instant messages, Facebook comments, Twitter tweets, Family Blogs, Business Blogs, and ugh, everyone prefers something different so communications is getting more frustrating. I’d really like to talk.

Perhaps Dan Rasmus, director of business insights at Microsoft, in the Aug 8, 2009 USA Today issue best describes an effect of this disconnected state… digital autism. Are we becoming disconnected from the live social and physical world? Read the article for an interesting perspective on getting too hooked on social networks: “Tweeting, texting render avid users ‘present yet absent’”.