Even God Needed Case Studies

Whenever I'm talking to prospective clients about integrating a Social Media strategy into their overarching marketing plans, I'm faced with the same question.

Do you have any case studies, either yours or other companies, that show how this will help?

Maybe it is just me or the fact I live in the SocMe echo chamber for large portions of each day, but why do you need a case study to believe it is good and beneficial to your business to do the following?

• give consumers yet another way to reach you
• engage in consumer conversations where consumers want to engage you
• create a 24/7/365 research feedback loop with your customers
• create an early warning detection system for bad product/service/brand conversations

I've never met a business owner that didn't intuitively understand the value of "knowing" his/her customers. But alas, the question arises and often times the lack of good case studies impedes the adoption of a SocMe strategy.

But then last week at church it hit me. People need proof in order to believe. Even God needed to show proof of his being, whether it was a burning bush, parting a sea or the ultimate case study, resurrection of his son from the dead. If you read the Bible, you find numerous instances of Jesus performing 'acts' which serve as pseudo case studies and give his followers permission to believe him to be the son of God and ultimately join his tribe. Now I'm not a scholar of the Bible and don't want to get into all of that... the point of this post is to say, like most things in life, better to understand the lay of the land and work within that framework than to waste time and energy wishing it wasn't so. While we'd like to be able to just say something is so and have others agree, case studies are the currency of persuasion.

So for me, I'm going to keep on doing things like my Mardi Gras Twitter Experiment to create shareable knowledge that SocMe programs do work, are trackable and can generate ROI along with the softer goals of just making your business more customer centric -- which is always a good thing in my mind. I hope others will do the same.

Thoughts you'd care to share? Do you have good case studies you want to share or resources for finding some? Just want to get something off your chest about case studies? It's ok. You can comment. It won't hurt a bit and only takes a minute. Join the conversation. Let me know you're here and what you're thinking won't you?

photo credit: omarrun