4 Reasons that Social Media Marketing is Difficult

In what seems like another lifetime I used to be on a competitive adventure racing team. For those of you not familiar with adventure racing it is a team sport that involves mountain biking, paddling, and navigation with map and compass throughout the race. Teams race to check points (CPs) along the course and when appropriate make transitions from one discipline to another. The team that finishes first, in tact and hitting all the CPs is declared the winner. Races can last from a few hours to several days of continuous racing.

During my adventure racing days I learned at least four valuable lessons that I think can apply to any social media marketing effort.

1. It’s harder than it seems – Sure, riding a few miles, running a few and paddling down a river, that’s easy. I can do that in my sleep. But, no one told us about the 100-degree heat and humidity of 75% and stinging nettle that shredded our legs and arms half way into the race. In social media things usually just don’t happen overnight. It takes time to build an audience, followers and relationships. It’s like planting seeds; they don’t germinate overnight either.
2. You will get lost – Even with the best plan or strategy it’s still easy to get lost. At night everything looks the same on the map. You can’t see any contours of the land and you have to go by strong visual cues like roads or streams and rivers. Social media is the same. Of course, there must be a strategy, but things happen and unless there is extreme focus and knowledge of exactly where you’re at on the “map” it’s easy to lose course. Expect to get lost, because you will. Have a plan for it and you can make adjustments quickly.
3. Stuff happens – One race that our team participated in was in the winter in North Georgia. The temperatures in that region of the U.S. are usually in the mid 40’s that time of year. Our team was from the Mid-West so that was fairly warm for us. We packed light and “expected” normal conditions. On our drive there a cold front moved into Georgia and the temperatures plummeted. Race morning the temperature was -4 degrees with wind chills around – 40. Needless to say, my teammate and I were the first cases of frostbite ever recorded in the local hospital. Lesson learned? Always expected the unexpected. I doubt Nestle expected the firestorm of negative publicity and attention on their Facebook fan page earlier this year as evidenced by their initial response, but had they expected to deal with such scenarios they could have mitigated much of the reaction and helped to diffuse the situation rather than adding fuel to the fire.
4. Giving up is easy – It’s easy to do, give up, especially when you don’t see any results for a long time. There would be races that my team would be at the back of the field, but I knew that races often had a very high attrition rate and that if we merely finished we’d be in the top finishers. In adventure racing finishing is often the goal. In a social media marketing strategy the objective is likely to be to develop relationships and convert those relationships into revenue or customer service opportunities. Another example to illustrate this point is a few species of bamboo will develop a small shoot the first year of growth and that shoot will hardly grow any height in the next 3 years, but in year 5 that plant will grow to be over 100’ tall. The previous 4 years were spent in preparation, building a strong root system to support the extremely rapid growth that was about to come. I’m not advocating that businesses spend 4 years of marketing dollars to build social communities, but many businesses become impatient with their efforts and give up right before they might have experienced passing many of their competitors because they simply gave up too soon.

I hope you will find some of my life lessons useful. Do you have any life lessons that apply to social media marketing? Let’s discuss.