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.

At 12:00 PM Eastern Standard Time on January 20, 2009 Barrack Obama became the 44th President of the United States of America. At exactly the same time, and with considerably less ceremony, the official White House website transformed. It is undoubtedly a sign of the times that the “peaceful transfer of power” includes a website roll over. That alone could be the topic of a dissertation.

It is a much discussed fact that President Obama used the power of the web and of new media more during his campaign than any other candidate in the history of this country. What I find particularly interesting, however, is that this masterful use of new media marketing did not stop when he placed his hand on the Lincoln Bible. Quite the contrary, it appears that they Obama political machine plans to use the internet and new media tools as much for governing as it did for campaigning.

Upon first landing on WhiteHouse.gov, I am struck first by the slick, modern, elegant feel – something I have come to expect from the Obama camp. (For an intersting comparison to the previous White House website, check out this Gizmodo post). My primary concern, however, is not the look, but the integration of new, social, and dynamic web elements.

For fun, I pulled up the page source and glanced at the code and was surprised to see six auto-discovery RSS feeds:

• Agenda Articles Feed
• Press Office Feed
• OMB News Article Feed
• Blog Feed
• Photo Gallery Feed
• Video Feed

Oddly enough, it appears that the blog feed is the only one that is currently active. Nevertheless, excuse the somewhat juvenile excitement here, but how cool is it that the leader of the free world has blog, photo, and video feeds. (Please note that I am fully aware that President Obama is neither blogging nor running this website, but it is no less exciting that the office of the President has undertaken these things.)

The official blog of the new White House is prominently featured on the front page, and I cannot help but think that this is my new ammunition against the crusty old executive who asks, “why the hell do we need a blog?”

The blog itself isn’t much yet, but if you go to the front page of the blog, you can see that the first five posts were all published at 12:01 PM. Looking at the front page right on innauguration day, I could not help but notice that the very nature of this blog reinforces a sense of rebirth…it simply starts at 12:01 PM as if there was nothing before it.

Further exploration of the Obama Administration’s new website reveals an as-yet-empty section for President Obama’s weekly video address. There are no videos yet, but I would bet $20 that the video players have full shareabilty functions like one click embedding.

I finish my tour of the new White House website by visiting the contact page where I read “President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history.” I’m generally too cynical to put stock in such statements, but compared to the previous White House website, this site is already taking huge steps toward being open and accessible.

Senator Obama showed the incredible power of new media marketing during his campaign, and it appears that President Obama will continue to leverage that power as he governs this nation. I will be following the evolution of the White House website in order to see if its promise of social connection is truly realized. I’m sure it will take a few months to get everything together, but make sure to check back in for my update of the reality of this new website.

A couple of weeks ago I hired a contractor to build my new house. I was very excited because this will be my first house and I have the luxury of building from scratch. I interviewed numerous contractors, determined to find the right one for this job. After all, building my house is just about the most important thing to me right now. I want it to be perfect.

After weeks of interviews, I settled on the contractor that I trusted to build the house I want. About a week after I hired him, the contractor called me at work and asked me to meet him at the build site on my way home. So, at around 6:30, tired from a long day, I arrived at the plot of land on which my new home would soon stand.

There was stuff everywhere: Lumber, bags of concrete mix, tools of every kind, two large Caterpillar back-hoes, a cement truck, and a small battalion of workmen. The contractor met me at my car, a broad smile beaming and a firm handshake.

“Well, Mr. Peters,” he began, “We’ve got everything we need. All the lumber has just come in. We’ve got the cement and equipment for the foundation. I’ve got brand new tools all ready and my best team. I’ve even got an electrician and plumber with all their equipment set up as well. Yes, Mr. Peters, I seems to me that we’re pretty much finished here.”

Okay, so clearly this story is made up. I am not building a house, there was no contractor, and therefore the contractor never uttered that ridiculous statement.

Think about this: If you hire someone to build you a house, and they claim to be done after getting together all the tools to build that house, you would likely pitch an absolute fit. Why then is this sort of behavior tolerated in the field of new media marketing? As I say in the title of this post, social media marketing is a means to an end, not the end itself. In other words, social media is the tools, not the house.

Unfortunately, the sort of ridiculousness seen in my little story seems to be taking place in the marketing world when dealing with the new, nebulous, and daunting field of social media. I see it happening in two separate scenarios.

Scenario #1

Scenario #1 takes place in a medium to large company. One of the higher-ups in the company decides that they are too far behind the competition and they simply must get a social media strategy right away. They pass the directive down to either their internal marketing team or their marketing/advertising agency. The marketers who are tasked with developing a social media marketing strategy launch into furious brainstorming sessions. “What’s best for us?” they ask. “Do we get a YouTube channel? Do we launch a blog? Do we let people upload pictures of themselves using our product to a special website?”

In this example, our marketing team settles on a company blog as the foundation of their social media strategy. The deadline approaches and the marketing team nervously makes their presentation to the aforementioned Higher-Up.

“What do you have?” the Higher-Up asks sternly.

The marketing team turns on the large computer screen and proudly shows the brand new www.company.com/blog. “We have a blog,” they say.

The Higher-Up peruses the blog for a few moments, scrolling down and clicking on a few links. He then sighs and leans back in his chair. “Well at least now we’ve got that social media thing handled,” he says.

Scenario #2

Scenario two takes place in companies of all sizes, though I have observed it most in smaller start-ups who look to forms of online marketing as a way to financially fit within their tightly cinched belts. Someone within the company begins searching for social media marketing and they find one of the countless “social media consultants” sprinkled throughout the internet. They contact one of these “consultants,” and the “consultant” enumerates the services he offers. They often look something like this:

1. Teach clients how to use social networks like Facebook and MySpace
2. Teach clients how to optimize their blog (often showing how to write catchier titles and add more pictures for easy readability)
3. Strategize with clients about how to add more interactivity to their website

The person at the company is now sufficiently convinced of the expertise of the “consultant” and brings him on to help navigate the murky waters of social media marketing.

Analysis

Both of these scenarios are ridiculous, but more unfortunate is that both of them actually happen. These scenarios also share a common problem. In both cases, when the client wants a marketing solution they are given tools. The client wants an end, but they are presented with the means as if those means are the end. When this happens, it more often than not leads to failure (or at least unfulfilled expectations.) This failure is then blamed on social media as a whole, and, over time, these repeated failures leave a deep-set stain on the field of social media marketing. This all then leads to established marketers viewing social media marketing as digital tomfoolery, and new media marketers as 21st century snake oil salesmen.

In the first example, a blog might indeed have been an excellent choice for the social media foundation of the company’s overall marketing strategy. But it is not the existence of the blog that is important, it is the marketing role that blog plays and the results it achieves that are important. If our hypothetical company from scenario #1 sells cardboard sunglasses, then the purpose of their blog should likely be, either directly or indirectly, to sell more cardboard sunglasses. The purpose of the blog is not simply to exist. The blog should be considered and treated as a means to and end (sales).

I have spoken with people from numerous companies who are frustrated with the failure of their company blog. “There is just no ROI,” they say. The first question I ask is, “Why do you use the blog?” They stare at me for a second and respond, “Because we knew we needed a blog.”

A blog, like any other marketing component needs to serve a purpose. Blogs happen to be flexible and their purpose can be anything from customer service to traffic generation to branding the company as a thought leader to an outright sales venue. (Note: there are certainly many more roles a blog could fill). Once the blog has a purpose, once it fills a marketing role, goals can be set for it. Those goals could be sales, or increased page rank of the company’s website, or even increased brand recognition. Once those goals are set, the blog can then be used as an effective marketing tool (means) helping to achieve your company’s goal (end).

In the second scenario we see the all-too-common problem of answering the wrong question. Our hypothetical company in that scenario wants to pursue a social media marketing strategy. The “consultant” that they hire teaches them what social networks are and how to use Facebook and MySpace. The consultant also shows them how to write snappy blog titles that tend to fare better on social news sites. What doesn’t happen, however, is the company and the “consultant” deciding what the goals are. As such, the company now knows how to use Facebook (i.e. make a profile, update it, try to find friends, etc…) but they have no idea why they are using Facebook. Or, perhaps more accurate: they know how to use Facebook, but they do not know how to use Facebook to fulfill their marketing needs. After all, the way a B2B company uses Facebook is likely very different from the way a new music-focused e-commerce site does.

I think of this problem with the following analogy. I want to learn to drive a car. I hire someone to teach me how to drive. They show up and show me how to put the key in the ignition and start the car. They then take my money and walk away. I have no more of an idea how to drive than I did before. In fact, I am now more likely to get in a wreck than I was before I knew how to start the car. In this example, I had a goal, an end: to learn to drive. I was presented with a means to that end: how to start the car. But, the means was treated like the whole enchilada. Now I’m screwed. I still cant’ drive, I have wasted money, and I was told that I should be able to drive now, so I am angry and blame the whole thing on the car.

Conclusion

I suppose I should now conclude what has turned into quite a long post. The conclusion is simple really…it’s in the title. Social media marketing is a means to an end, not an end. When approaching a social media strategy, make sure you treat it as you do your other marketing initiatives. Determine first what your needs are. Are sales all that matters? Or do you want to better engage current users of your product to increase repeat purchases in the long run? Your needs inform your marketing, and social media marketing is no different. Don’t let someone sell you the means when you really want the end. If you want a house, make sure you work with a social media marketing agency that wont just give you the lumber.