Fish Where The Fish Are... Or Not

Flickr // CaptPiper

Saturday, Matt Dickman wrote a post which triggered a comment from me, due to another person's comment in reaction to Matt's post. I thought that given the length of my comment, it was worth cleaning up a bit and posting here.

The comment that triggered this brought up the idea of "fishing where the fish are" as an appropriate excuse to jump into tactics before knowing your strategy. This saying has become fairly popular among social media fans thanks to Jeremiah Owyang and his brief presentation on "fishing where the fish are" as an analogy for approaching social media. (Of course the planners reading this will likely recall Jeff Goodby's ideas about planners being the equivalent of fishing guides in Jon Steel's Truth, Lies & Advertising.)

Now, to be fair, I think the point Jeremiah was trying to make was to get out and understand people's behaviors in social media before doing anything in the space, which I agree with. But, the so-called social media gurus have taken this in another direction. They love to make people think that EVERYONE is in social media these days. They work hard to convince clients that they just HAVE to be there. Thanks to Jeremiah's line, they now throw out the "you've got to fish where the fish are" idea in an attempt to convince them.

Well, maybe this is where the fish are, maybe it isn't. It really depends on what kind of fish you're looking for.

One of the biggest mistakes several of these social media experts make is assuming "everyone" is like them and spends all day and night in all the same places they do. You can see it in their blog posts and presentations. They draw up diagrams showing how people are using all of these various tools, making it look like everyone writes a blog, updates their Facebook status constantly, Tweets their life away, posts photos on Flickr, Facebook and Posterous simultaneously through their iPhone, keeps a Tumblr just for fun, makes a little YouTube video every now and then and bookmarks everything they like and then some on Delicious.

Hmmm. Something smells kind of fishy here, don't you think? Now let's look at Facebook as just an example...

Yes, there are over 250 million people on Facebook and some of them are doing a lot of posting and sharing. But what not many people talk about is that this also means there are about 6.5 billion people on this planet who are not on Facebook.

Further, let's say you're dealing with a client who is only looking to do something with their marketing in the United States. By Facebook's statistics, only about 30% of their users are from the U.S. That means there are roughly 230,000,000 people in the U.S. who again, are not on Facebook. To put it another way, there are just about as many people in the United States who are not on Facebook as there are people who are on Facebook throughout the entire world.

Given all of that, it's very likely that a majority of a lot of companies' fish aren't on Facebook, or any other social media platform for that matter. This is why, to the point of Matt's post, if you start planning your marketing around tactics based on where the fish aren't, it simply doesn't matter.

What Matt is trying to emphasize in his post is that we need to always remember to stay focused on the bigger picture before we start diving into tactics. Once we have the bigger picture figured out and the right strategies in place to connect what people are doing to our client's business objectives, then we can start figuring out the exact details—be they social media driven or not.

It's like a post by Seth Godin that another person pointed out in the comments to Matt's post - we have to stop building weak strategies around shiny tactics and then saying the strategy failed when really we didn't think too much about the strategy at all because we were too blinded by the bright shiny tactic.

To wrap this all up, I don't want people to think I am putting down doing things in social media. I think clients need to be paying attention to it and trying (appropriate) things for sure. I just also think we all need to use a bit of common sense when approaching the social media space and make sure that what we're doing is the right thing based on the behaviors of the people we're trying to connect with.

Anyway, I think that's probably enough now and it certainly covers what I was mostly saying over on Techno//Marketer...

Comments

[HolyCow]

Paul - extremely well put - one can read between the lines about your feelings regarding the 'Social Media Expert' - a bizzare term in many ways. The term 'expert' has never been so flacidly applied surely? A love of digital technology and SEO does not make you a marketer as indeed a love of art doesn't make you an artist. It makes you an informed enthusiast at best - Social Media Enthusiast perhaps.

I also agree that you simply cannot replace a proper diagnostic approach to understanding current consumer behaviour - even though it will probably highlight the rather unedifying fact that not every existing and potential category purchaser is where you want them to be. Problematical if your selling a one answer solution to a clients business objective as seems to be the case.

Which of course highlights the other elephant in the room - the lack of skilled and experience marketeers at AMs and planner level in digital agencies. But that's for another time right?

best

M

[Matt Nelson]

Paul - Thanks for bringing up the web's 'dirty little secret'.

This story is told on every platform...on Twitter, 'the gurus' always talk about the importance of being involved in the conversation and that its wrong to be a passive listener. They tell a story about how if you add value over time, you'll get followers and drive traffic.

The problems with this idea are:

1. Twitter is more valuable for people with authority. Just look at the list of most popular accounts.
2. It's their full time job to find valuable links...nothing I contribute will be 'new'.

[Tim Callington]

All good points, especially the last one about doing the right thing based on the behaviours of the people you're trying to connect with.

I come from a PR background so possibly have a slightly different take on "fish where the fish are".

On the occasions I tend to use it, which are fairly rare I must admit, it's to advise clients that they go to the places their target audiences are already gathering, rather than trying to establish a completely new space online.

So if you make blue widgets and there already happens to be a thriving blue widget community on Facebook, find ways to add value to that community rather than starting a completely new one from scratch.

[John V Willshire]

Great post, Paul.

With the 'misleading' sell of social media, I wonder if it's a part of the heritage that agency/client relationships have?

In the world of mass media, it made sense that to convince a client that something was a good idea, you had to get across just how 'big' the idea was... how many people it reached, % of audience covered, frequency, speed etc etc etc

Which means clients are conditioned to buying ideas that tick these boxes, and agencies are conditioned to sell ideas in this way...

...so we end up with a situation where the tactics are completely oversold, based on criteria that don't really make sense for what the tactics actually are.

So really, 'social media experts' need to educate clients about the new criteria to build expectations on, rather than try and pitch for their piece of the pie based on criteria that suits 'the other guys'.

It's like playing Top Trumps and continually picking the area you do worst in...

[Baseonegiff]

Great post, and backs up the day I've just spent. I started research this morning for a client believing that their target audience spent their time reading and commenting on a certain type of blog. I found the blogs - plenty of them, and some great content.... but pretty much no comments at all - just a ghost town. Fortunately I did find my audience elsewhere... now I need to get out that good old rod!

[Jimmy Gilmore]

Great points. But consider that Facebook has a much larger audience than say Lost and is a heck of a lot cheaper to engage. The upfront cost is often a reason our clients ask us about social media.

A audit will usually show pretty quickly if the fish are actually there.

[Chris G]

First off, I really liked this post for a number of reasons.

1.) It encourages discussion on the topic
2.) Calling out those who use tactics not always in the best interest of the client
3.) Appeared honest and opinionated

I am glad you brought up this point with SM, especially when companies are trying to sell it in a nice neat package. Although one point I was hoping you would bring up is SM's reach. Similar to how I arrived for the first time at your blog today SM has an incredible element to it that expands beyond the walls of Facebook and Twitter. I believe it is an undeniable fact that those who wish to market themselves on the internet should at least have some presence in SM (not that I think you expressed this) even if the "fish" exist somewhere else.

Again, great post.

Chris