This famous quote was claimed to have been uttered by the infamous Queen Marie-Antoinette during one of the famines that occurred in 1789 France. Upon being alerted that her people were suffering due to widespread bread shortages, she is said to have replied, "Then let them eat cake."
I keep thinking of Marie Antoinette when I I hear social media gurus hitting the same nail over and over on the power of the social web. Arent you on the bandwaggon yet ? You need a website ? Eat some social media cake. You need an advertising campaign? Wait a second, have some social media cookies. Sales are down ? How about some nice warm social media muffins. None of these are going to get you full, and they will probably give you scurvy if you rely only on them for your nutrition, but hey…they sure taste good! Hmmmm cake !
Social media alone is bad. Really really really bad. Who cares if your company is on twitter or answering to some blog war between elitist bloggers. Make sure you cover some basics 1st. Apparently 47% of marketers don’t even use analytics. Are you?
Asking simple questions and getting simple answers to make better business decisions is the cornerstone of good nutrition, euhh, I mean online strategy.
Sure you can eat cake all day long and make thousands of friends on Facebook, get poked and grow your followers list on Twitter. Just make sure you’re doing that on a full stomach of good site design practices, coherent brand experience and relevant functionalities that make peoples lives better.
Marie Antoinette’s famous line landed her a gig with a guillotine quickly after. Be careful out there!
