The Cause, The Hedgehog, and Social Media

Social media marketing and social marketing are often confused for each other.  Social marketing as long been a synonym for cause marketing.  In thinking about how these two terms often get confused I realized: they are the SAME thing. We have fought to separate the two and make them out to be completely different. One that uses “technology” and another that “helps” people.

Today I argue that all good social media marketing is social (cause) marketing.  Cause marketing has always been about organizing a group of people in support of something: quitting smoking, fighting cancer, saving the environment, healthy eating etc. How is this different from the most popular social media marketing examples you’ve seen spewed by every “consultant” on Twitter?

Zappos
The idea for this post came from watching a video of Seth Godin speaking at TED. Here is the video, well worth taking 20 minutes to watch it:

Zappos has long been touted as an example of social media marketing for the way that it encouraged its employees to use Twitter to share information with each other and customers. The common questions that revolve around the Zappos example is: How did they do it? Why don’t other companies do it?

Other companies can’t do it. In fact Zappos could only do it because Tony as a leader has created a culture around the idea of surpassing customer expectations. Because his employees have bought into the idea of going above and beyond, Twitter was an easier sell.  This is why Tony can do it at Zappos, but other companies fail at even getting one person to use it for work.  Zappos using Twitter is not a social media marketing example it is an example of leadership and the willingness of employees to support a cause:  customers who love shoes.

Dell IdeaStorm
Dell’s IdeaStorm platform has long been considered the best example of using crowdsourcing to develop and market products. IdeaStorm isn’t marketing as much as it is a place to collect ideas that were flooding in by e-mail taking up valuable staff resources. IdeaStorm serves a cause.  It serves a group of people that want better technology: hardware and software. Dell’s simply helped them organize and in the process has an invaluable way to determine the demand for a new product in the market place.

Wine Library TV and Gary V
Gary has long been the poster child of social media marketing and personal branding. He has done a great job. He is interesting, polarizing and often over the top. Sure all of those traits help to get 80,000 people to watch a daily online video of wine reviews.  If you think it is Gary’s amazing personality that won everyone over, you are wrong.  Watch the first 100 episodes of Wine Library TV, they sucked. Gary’s secret just like all other social media success stories was his ability to build a community and unite them them through a cause.

The secret to his success is not his crazy reviews instead it is how he closes his show. “You with a little bit of me. We are changing the wine world.” That is a powerful and empowering quote. That is the sentiment that a leader uses to rally a community or as Seth would say a tribe.

Social Media and the Hedgehog
One of my favorite and also probably one of the best business books ever written is Good To Great by Jim Collins. In it Collins look at good companies and how they became great companies. He asserts that all of the great companies share similar traits. The one trait that always resonated the most with me was his idea of the Hedgehog concept. In short it is the one goal that you can be the best at that will lead to the success of your organization.

I think of the hedgehog concept as it relates to social media is critical. What is the one “thing” that you can do to effectively lead your community that will result successfully reaching your goal?

Social media marketing and casue marketing are the same, but regardless what you call it you have to have the right leader with the right goal.