Have Marketers Put Too Much Emphasis on The Benefits of Social Media?

Is it me...or I'm I confused as to how a business that predominantly caters to 15-30 year olds can be worth $13 billion?

That's one suggested valuation of Twitter heading in to their IPO.

What's more--as they begin to add advertising popping up on their Tweets and Tweeters--how can I, as a potential investor know what kind of revenue they can produce to justify their valuation?

What's more--what kind of sales can I expect from that age demographic? 

Granted, that age demographic probably Tweets more than the rest of us--but can the advertising investment be justified considering their disposable income?

If I sell cars to the 18-34 year old crowd--are they really going to Tweet their best friend at the moment the test drive ends and ask if they should buy it or not (according to one posts' theory)?

Surely, we all want advice from our friends in the purchase of certain items--but have marketers over-emphasized the benefits of using social media--much to the chagrin of their clients?

Possibly as radio or TV were in their infancy--I'm sure the newspapers were telling their advertisers--they weren't proven yet, to not forget their medium, etc.

Maybe social media are in a similar boat--but how much time/contact does a "qualified" prospect with disposable income actually spend with social media in comparison to traditional media?

As Robert Rose commented in regard to utilizing traditional media/tactics along with content marketing in social media--comparing bread and butter:

But let’s be honest, you’ve probably got things that are working well along with things that maybe aren’t working so well.   So instead of looking at content marketing as something that has to compete with these other tactics, let’s instead look at how a content marketing initiative can be layered in to enhance your most poorly performing tactic, or even revolutionize and exponentially increase one of your better performing tactics. Content marketing can be like butter – making things taste better. 
/http://labs.openviewpartners.com/content-marketing-is-the-butter-not-the-bread/

I believe he has the proper horse before the cart.

Social media and rich content via social media can enhance your current advertising plans--not replace them.

I prefer to think that they would be complimentary-as all media work together to impact customers at certain "touch" points.

Leslie Walker--in her post on social media goes further and says,

Measuring the true yield or result or impact of social media marketing efforts isn't as easy as it might sound. If the goal it so sell products or services, then it's relatively easy to do before and after sales comparisons and get an idea of how much impact most marketing campaigns have.

But it's harder to measure how each type of social media is having indirect effects on the image of any company or product, especially over the long term. If the outcome is delayed or likely to come much later, that makes tracking the true impact of social media harder. And if the impact is highly indirect--such as enabling a company to know more about its customers, for example, which eventually could lead to higher sales--then it's hard to quantify the financial impact.

So since social media metrics is a relatively new science or set of techniques, marketers often aren't able to tell what the exact financial impact is of using most social media. Researchers are constantly developing new approaches to measuring potential benefits, including various approaches that look at the intensity of user participation and result in a metric called return on engagement.

But marketers are demanding more sophisticated social media analytical tools all the time, and the ability to measure financial impact of each type of social media communication is improving all the time.

http://personalweb.about.com/od/socialmediaresearch/a/Social-Metrics.htm

Perhaps now is not the time to give up your traditional media--but rather increase social media all the more to "engage" younger prospects for future sales.

Would love to hear your thoughts on how traditional media works for your business along with social media. 

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