What is "Social Media" Marketing?: (And Why Should I Care?)
I hear a lot of talk about “Social Media,” and I wonder if a serious marketer should pay attention to all the hype. The latest report from Forrester Research certainly indicates that marketers should wake up to the new trend — it predicts that enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies will increase to $4.6 billion by the year 2013.
Here’s a quick primer on "Social Media":
The number of companies entering the "Social Media" space every day makes it difficult for even the savviest marketers to keep up.
The web as we once knew it (static HTML webpages) has evolved and improved over time into a living, breathing "social media" consisting of blogs, wikis, social networking, mashups, podcasts, RSS, video sharing, communities, and the like. The common thread among all of these new tools is collaboration and sharing. Some famous names that you might recognize are Facebook, Blogspot, YouTube, LinkedIn, Digg, Technorati, Wikipedia, Flickr, MySpace, Del.ic.io.us, StumbleUpon, and Twitter. The bottom line is that social media is about free, user-generated content. And the general consensus among marketers today is that if your company is not on the social media bandwagon, you're missing out.
Why Is This Trend Important to Marketers?
So, how the heck do I advertise there? You might say. Well, this leads to the second topic of discussion, why social media is important for marketers. Social media represents a fundamental shift in the way we consume information. As a marketer, this means that traditional ways of communicating with your customers have become less relevant. When you think of "traditional" marketing, you think of things like TV commercials, trade shows, print ads, and outbound telesales centers. All of these forms of media rely on "pushing" your message out to the customer, hoping that they find it appealing enough to pay attention to it. Even some internet marketing falls into this category, namely banner ads and email ads. They push information to people who may not necessarily want it. But the sad truth for marketers is that people continue to find ways to block traditional marketing out of their lives. They use "do not call" lists, DVRs, and spam filters. And who blames them? It's an interruption. And in the internet age, time is our most valuable commodity.
Social media, on the other hand, is permission-based. The way that people consume this new media reflects that. People read blogs on their own time. They create their own content. They connect with other users who have similar interests. They search the "blogosphere" for something that interests them. And usually, they do it for free. For marketers, social media requires a shift in mindset from "pushing" your message to your customer to "pulling" them in with interesting content.
Here is an early example of "user-generated" content in advertising. The "AMD 64-Second Film Contest" gave aspiring filmmakers the chance to win big by uploading short movies that they created on an AMD 64-bit processor.
The key message here is that traditional marketing methods do not reach people in the new social media world. I heard someone recently compare social media to a cocktail party. Everyone is having a good time, making conversation, connecting, networking. But the difference is that this cocktail party is not confined by time or space. The conversation continues indefinitely, as long as there are people out there willing to join it. Should you walk into the party and "offer 20 percent off if you buy now?" That’s probably not the best idea. It requires a fundamentally different approach: You introduce yourself to the community, you contribute to the conversation, and you share with others in the room. Occasionally, you might give yourself a plug. See the difference?
"Social ads" are a good example of ads in a community context. They show up on social networks like Facebook next to updates from your friends. So they feel like part of the conversation, rather than an intrusion.
How Can You Leverage Social Media?
The core ideas of social media — collaborating, sharing, "pulling" content, listening to customers — are here to stay. Therefore, you need to implement a plan to leverage the right kinds of social media now. The following describes things that every business can do to take advantage of the social media trend:
- Publish Content — no matter what kind of company you are, you should be producing content. Maybe you already have some content produced in-house, such as webinars, whitepapers, videos, or articles written by your executives. If not, you should consider creating them. It might make sense for you to start a blog. Then take all of this content and make sure it’s utilized on relevant social media sites. You will be surprised how many customers will interact with your brand as a result.
- Monitor Published Content — you should be looking to see what content is actually published. You can easily measure this on sites like Technorati, Google BlogSearch, and Digg to see what content is published and linking back to your site. In addition, you should monitor what kind of information your competitors are posting and publishing.
- Monitor Your Feedback — hopefully, some of your customers are saying good things about you via the social mediasphere. Take that information and highlight it on your website. Use it to inform your sales team. Learn from it. Many companies improve their services by listening to what their customers are saying in social media. It's also a great way to monitor the effectiveness of your PR efforts.
- Measure Your Inbound Links — Remember all the content that you published on the social mediasphere? Now all those people are linking back to your site, happily consuming your content. Well, those incoming links are one of the best ways to improve your search-engine rankings. Understanding who is linking back to your site, and from where, is incredibly powerful information. Some companies are even able to measure the number of visitors, leads, and customers they obtain as a result of their social media marketing efforts.
- Make Your Site "Social Media–Friendly" — If you are posting content on your website and on other sites, too, then you need to make sure it's social media–friendly. In other words, can people email it? Can they create an RSS feed from it? Can they bookmark it? Can they bookmark it with Del.ic.io.us? Can they share it? Can they "Digg" it? Add these little icons next to your content, and your social media buzz will increase greatly.
- Learn About Your Customers — For a market researcher, the social mediasphere is a welcomed innovation for networking and communication. You can zero-in on groups of people with common interests. For example, let’s say I like to collect rare furniture from the 1970s. There is probably a Facebook group out there for people like me, where we can chat and share information. What if you are a furniture retailer and could observe our group? What motivates us? What are we looking for? What companies do we like? What marketplaces do we buy from? You might consider building community forums on your own website for your customers to interact with one another.
- Advertise In Social Media — I know, it’s a contradiction to "push" advertisements at people when they are in this collaborative environment. But actually, it works. Why do you think Facebook was valued at $1 billion recently? It is an advertiser’s true delight. If you can serve ads to people who fit into a very specific niche profile, then you no longer have the waste associated with traditional media. Let’s say my company creates extra-large dog collars. To make the most effective use of my media dollars, I would probably not want to run a TV commercial. But if I could find a group of people on MySpace who owns St. Bernards and Great Danes and target banner ads to them, I might actually have some success. Or if I was trying to target IT professionals who use AJAX and Ruby on Rails, running ads on LinkedIn targeted by keywords might be beneficial. True, this is imposing the old "push" model upon the new media, but the "hybrid" model can also be extremely effective. Sometimes it feels good to break the rules.
- Create Your Own Social Media Application — Many social networks run on open platforms, meaning that anyone with programming skills can create applications that fit within their network. These can be anything from mini websites to widgets to mashups that combine one or more open technologies. Companies are using these tools to distribute their messages through a social context. For example, Netflix could create a widget that sends a message to all your Facebook friends asking them to "Compare Movie Tastes." As a (not so avid) jogger, I sometimes use this handy Google "pedometer" mash-up that allows me to plot out my course and see how far I’ve run. (Note: This probably wasn’t created by Google, and there’s no reason why it couldn’t be sponsored by Reebok or New Balance.) Last but not least, some companies go so far as to create their very own branded social networking sites. These sites create an entire community around a company’s brand.
Tocquigny created a Google "mash-up" for the non-profit, humanitarian organization, World Vision. This allowed them to create a more engaging, interactive experience for potential sponsors. The tool leverages Google Maps technology, allowing users to see children in need of sponsorship around the world.
A Word of Caution: All That Glitters is Not Gold
The first thing that many marketers do when they recognize the importance of social media is decide to jump in head first, guns blazing. The attitude is "Whatever it is, I’ll take it." They assume that consumers think of them as dinosaurs if they’re not on board. Well, that can be a mistake, too. Marketers should carefully consider the relevance of social media to the products they sell before investing time and effort into this new medium. For example, if you sell specialty automotive fasteners, do you really need to set up a company profile in Facebook? If you are a high-tech company who sells B2B VOIP services, who is really going to "StumbleUpon" your site or "Digg" your content?
When the goal is to acquire as many inbound links pointing to your site as possible, are you ready for the amount of work to make that happen? Do you really want to invite everyone you know to be your company Facebook friend? Do you want to Twitter out messages every time you do something, hoping your customers will notice it? Do you have time to create content for a blog every day and then market that blog to ensure it’s picked up by the appropriate sites? Sounds like a lot of work. And it is. The key to social media marketing is to ask "Does this make sense for my company?"
In summary, lots of people are talking about social media, but it’s rare to find a marketer who truly understands how to apply it to their own business model. It’s even rarer to find marketers who know how to measure and justify the ROI of their social media marketing efforts. Nonetheless, a paradigm shift has taken place, and now is the time for you to start exploring where your company fits in the new social media world.
