Thanks to social media tools, marketers are finally learning the value of sharing the spotlight with their customers. In the old days, product information flowed directly from the brand to the customer. Marketers would put their heads together and develop the story they wanted to tell, the narrative that would (with any hope) stay in the mind of the customer when the purchase window moved from locked shut to wide open.  Of course, branding in this sense still exists; we need only look at the most recent Super Bowl to see advertisers jockey for attention and spend exorbitant funds on commercials to sell pancakes and tax assistance. Continue reading »

If you’re reading this blog, chances are that you take more advantage of social media than your average internet user.  You’re likely on Facebook and maybe even Twitter.  You might have a blog or check out Reddit and Digg once a day.

Do you simply use those tools?  Or, do you participate with their communities?

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You lost your job? You have some experience marketing? Thinking about becoming a new media marketing consultant? You have a Twitter or Facebook account? Social media is big right now, is it not? You could be a social media consultant! Continue reading »

Whenever I hear someone talking about the use of social media or about how social media campaigns are going to replace e-mail marketing, direct marketing, public relations or stunt campaigns, I cringe. Early last year, we wrote that there are more ways to reach an audience than ever before. And even in the current economic climate, in which business are reducing marketing budgets while devoting larger chunks of the remaining dollars to online media of one form or another, it is reckless and silly to talk about one marketing channel obsoleting another. Social media, by definition, is collaborative, and effective social media campaigns are always designed with synergy in mind.

This is nowhere more evident than with e-mail marketing. E-mail is already a fairly social marketing channel. Companies send small polls, surveys, and contests in many of their mailings, and an even higher percentage of mailings feature a call to action for the recipient to forward the e-mail to a friend. For a medium that, at its core, is interruptive and monologic, e-mail does a surprisingly good job fostering interactivity and community. Better than perhaps any other method, e-mail allows companies to directly target and engage an audience that has universally expressed interest (by opting to receive the e-mails). What e-mail cannot do, however, is bring customers into direct contact with a company and with each other. Social media can, of course, through blogs or social networks or video or Twitter.

But the larger point is that, when combined, e-mail and social media complement one another and shore up their respective weaknesses to such a significant degree that it’s almost impossible to see how some marketers came to the conclusion that social media campaigns would replace e-mail marketing campaigns. If you want to give customers an avenue for discussion, for instance, you can add information about a company Facebook page (or even an internal forum) to your mailings, thereby giving your e-mail audience a direct path to that discussion. Conversely, you can feature opt-in links for your mailing list on Facebook so that people who discover the page organically can easily subscribe to the e-mail list. This is just one of many simple and straightforward ways e-mail and social media can work together.

But enough with the simple ways. There are far more interesting approaches that leverage the synergy between e-mail and social media campaigns. You could use e-mail to promote the initial launch of a promotional or viral video, or use a blog as an informative tool that is also a gateway to premium content distributed only by e-mail. You could leverage social network presence to make your e-mail seem more disarming and familiar, or use both e-mail and social networks to push a contest, game, incentive program, or sale. And as more people enter the social web and mobile e-mail clients continue to improve, there will only be more opportunities like these.

I think the mistake people make when they discount these synergistic strategies is to assume that e-mail campaigns should promote social media, or that social media campaigns should somehow promote e-mail. It is, of course, ridiculous to use one marketing channel to promote yet another marketing channel, and any company who does so will not have an effective marketing program. To take the first simple example I gave, the synergy I’m talking about has nothing to do with sending an e-mail to your subscribers that tells them your company now has a Facebook page. It has everything to do with adding a small panel to your e-mails that simply tells your subscribers that, should they wish to connect on Facebook, your company is there. Regardless of what marketing channel or combination of channels you are using, your priority must be to give value to your customers.

It’s important to remember that word of mouth marketing and social media campaigns have a somewhat unique ability to act as the proverbial glue that holds a larger marketing program together. Whereas TV advertising, publicity stunts, and even e-mail can’t access targets within their comfort zone, social media’s pervasive presence can. It is the casual voice, the near-constant presence, and the reinforcer. Social media has no means, no method, and no desire to supplant other marketing channels. To suggest otherwise is absurd.

Although the economic ground beneath our feet is squishy at best, we’re standing in a particularly sweet spot in the world of social media marketing. As more marketers turn to blogging, microblogging and social networks to build brand loyalty, the social media services themselves continue to wrestle with how to make a profit off all of our online activity.

Twitter has finally hired its first business development executive as it continues to look into pay-per-tweet and advertising revenue streams while Facebook has implemented a fairly lucrative advertising model and even manages to convince some of us to purchase digital “gifts” for our online “friends.” MySpace has found currency, both literally and figuratively, in the music world, as it offers bands a forum to reach new audiences and build their online following.

While these social networks flesh out their budget plans, marketers continue to search for the best way to retain customers and find cost-efficient strategies to communicate with them. As the economic forecast calls for more gloom in the coming months, those marketers who have managed to hold onto their jobs need to find a way to keep their brands in front of their customers without depleting their company’s remaining funds. Now is the time to shed your misgivings about social media marketing. Until these services start charging a registration and usage fee, it’s too costly to your own business objectives NOT to try them out.

With that said, remember that the only solid social media strategy for your business is the one that works. There is no one, perfect way to maximize the reach and scope of Facebook or Ning or Digg. If you create a space in which you can continually offer compelling content and value to your customers and prospects, then they will return. Simply put, the old excuses for why your business can avoid dipping its toe in the social media marketing pool no longer work.

Social media marketing takes too much time to set up and monitor

In the time it took you to read the opening paragraph of this post, you could have signed up for a new Twitter account, written the topic sentence of your next blog post, or invited twenty people to become fans of your business on Facebook. While it’s true that social media marketing requires attention and upkeep, you will get the hang of it with enough practice. Over time, you’ll develop your own voice and get a sense of the type of communication your customers and prospects react to the best.

Social media marketing can’t possibly bring value to my business

According to a 2008 study by Cone, 59 percent of Americans regularly use social media, and of those, 56 percent find a stronger connection with brands that have established some sort of interactive social media environment. While the ROI of social media marketing can be difficult to calculate, social media’s intangible bang-for-your-buck is as a lead-nurturing tool. You might not make a direct sale through Twitter marketing (although Dell certainly has), but you will help your business to stay in front of its future customers, so that once the economic ground grows more solid, you’ll be in the right position to move forward.

In other words, social media marketing has grown from a fringe service into a viable marketing strategy for companies of all sizes. As Americans spend more time in online environments, it’s more important than ever before to solicit feedback and generate forums where you can demonstrate your company’s expertise. And while Twitter twiddles its thumbs over how to make money off of 140-character tweets, marketers can test a rich array of free services to communicate with their customer base and wait out the storm.

This is a guest post from Megan. Subscribe to our feed if you’d like to hear more of her thoughts in the near future.