The aftermath of an actor’s tragic suicide in India holds a particularly important lesson for all social marketers, especially for those who think obsessing about organic growth is the only route to social marketing success.
It is nobody’s case that organic growth is not important. Boosting Instagram likes, Facebook followers, YouTube views, SoundCloud plays, or other metrics is impossible without organic growth.
Yet, there’s more to social marketing, especially when you are competing against those with big teams, deep pockets, and a cookie-cutter approach to content creation. And this is why how social marketers reacted to the suicide is so relevant.
Ugly Social Marketing Truths
The suicide led to actors expressing concerns about bullying, nepotism, and favouritism in the industry followed by an avalanche of related content on Insta, FB, and other social platforms.
The sheer volume of content and the pace at which it was generated highlight some very important truths for social marketers.
- Social marketing has become a game of speed. Trends develop, mature, and taper off very quickly, which means you cannot afford to be slow in reacting to the issue.
- Staying silent will only mean you will lose your audience to somebody who is more vocal than you. Sadly, you don’t have the option of choosing the trend. If it’s there to be talked about, you better start talking.
- Numbers trump quality. Somebody posting 20 ordinary posts in a day will end up getting more views, likes, followers compared to somebody posting just one quality post a day.
- Everybody has an agenda. Some may want to just browbeat the opposing view while others may just be looking for likes and more metrics. Not having an agenda is not an option.
Dealing with the Ugly Truth
Creating a quality FB post or Insta meme or Twitter update or YouTube video is not an easy task. Yet, you can see channels posting tons of content every day, which obviously shows how the deep pockets are being used to churn out content using hired staff.
It’s interesting to note that the strongest opposition to shrewd tactics like buying Insta likes or FB followers or Twitter retweets come from those who are manipulating social platforms to further their agenda.
In such a scenario, adding a few paid likes to your hard work and making it visible to a bigger audience is plain business sense.
Combining your creativity with packages that add likes, views, followers, and shares to your post with a click of the mouse, until the playing field remains so skewed, is the smartest thing you can do.
