In the 19th century, snake oil salesmen would travel the country selling “miracle cures.” There is actually a traditional Chinese medicine made from snake oil which has some pain relieving properties, but the snake oil salesmen of America were not so particular in selecting compounds with actual curative properties. Why go to the trouble of finding the real thing when the story will sell the product for you?
Today we see the same thing in social media. Digital social media marketing can be incredible effective if done correctly. It can be a medium cost, high bandwidth method of communicating with existing and new customers.
Like snake oil, however, most people peddling “social media marketing” wouldn’t know effective marketing if it made 12-15 impression on their face. They trade on the fact that you don’t know it either, so they flim flam you with buzzwords and fancy graphics so you don’t realize that your money is completely wasted on them.
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