Social media is a hot topic everywhere in the marketing world. And naturally for a good reason; millions of people use their day – working day in many cases – with Facebook, myspace, YouTube or any other social media networks. Or just keep updating their Twitter status. And again, Gurus are back - this time with the adventures of social media marketing. They are good. As good as they were with internet and dot.coms years back. And the result is also the same; advertisers are lost, advertising agencies are lost and Gurus are setting up new agencies, giving speeches and making money. Next wave is that Big Agency guys from WPP, Publicis etc are knocking the doors of those Guru Agencies and buying them as part of their portfolio. Same old story again. But that’s great!

I have worked with so many different angles of marketing communication that I see only the curve of evolution; technology created infrastructure enabling clever people to create new businesses. Businesses working well for marketing communication but not the one and only solution putting all the previous channels into trash. Social media marketing is just that; beautiful platform, millions of people, flavored with a massive mount of hype and that same, old, repeated message by the Gurus; if you want to make money, you should jump out from traditional media channels and put your advertising expenditures into social media.

Yes, I do understand the power of social media in marketing communication, even in sales. But no - I don’t think it is going the change the whole world. It’s not the social media that is destroying newspapers, it’s the bad economy and few stupid moves the publishers made already before the arrival of social media. In marketing communication social media is one of the channels on the palette of marketing channels, not the one & only, not even the best in many cases; maybe still in most of the cases. But sure, social media is something that every smart advertiser, marketer, media planner, advertising agency or CMO needs to understand. At least you need to know it’s there and you should find someone to explain it to you. But don’t buy the 1-truth-Guru-stories. Maybe you bought those for your dot.com strategy in 1998? If you did, you get my message. If you didn’t, just take a zip of red wine tonight and browse around the social media landscape; you will find that there is no one truth in this case, either. Social media needs to be on the plans, more and more everyday, but it’s not the lifesaver you might think. It’s an effective marketing and sales channel, which you will use, eventually.

Keep going to the seminars and workshops on social media marketing. Learning is always a good thing to do. And the best thing about social media marketing is the accessibility; just google social media marketing and the learning can start. In a form of thousands of cases, learning’s, best practises. And Gurus.

Cheers for Gurus! Cheers for evolution! Cheers for new channels!