There is no denying that social media has everyone’s attention. Once thought to be frivolous and only the domain of teenagers has turned into a marketing powerhouse with small businesses to multi-national, Brooks Brothers suit-wearing corporations all clamoring for attention on Twitter and Facebook. And why not? Social media is about conversational marketing. We are all tired of being told what we should like and who we should care about, with social media platforms we can now decide for ourselves who we want to follow and where we get our news.
However, like all good ideas, a dose of moderation is the best medicine. It seems that every minute I am bombarded with tweets and emails from so called “social media gurus” offering to solve all of my problems. I am far from anti-social media; just the opposite. I spend my fair share of time in the trenches of Twitter and LinkedIn and our CEO, Hollis Thomases, has just authored Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day. We offer social media marketing services as part of our offerings as well—so to criticize the tactic would be a bit hypocritical.
How Social Media is Like Steroids for Your Other Campaigns
Using social media as your only tactic is not enough. I do think that the essentially free nature of social media has prompted many to sink all of their efforts into it, but the timeless adage of “time is money” should apply to us all who are trying to market our businesses or our clients’ businesses. Think of how many hours you spent on Facebook last week trying to increase brand awareness or tweeting about your latest product release. Then think about the return. How many sales or new clients have you landed directly from your social media efforts? Simple math to do the division can get you the ROI.
Now let’s get picky. Did that new sale or client close entirely because of social media? Not likely. There probably was some sales work thrown in or at the very least the prospect visited your website to learn more about what you offer. This may get me in trouble (super secret marketing tip: controversy breeds traffic) but I would venture to say that very, very little social media efforts result in a sale entirely of their own merit. Other factors almost always come in to play that help close the deal. So let’s embrace this idea and focus on other tactics to augment your social media marketing. Note the key word “augment”. Don’t drop your social media, but don’t make it the cornerstone either.
Let’s look at some examples:
- A new product launch should have already been optimized into your keyword universe with your on-page SEO long before you begin tweeting about it to your followers.
- An upcoming event you are planning should have the PPC impressions already flowing before you mention it on your Facebook page.
- In fact, once a PPC landing page is set, you can begin announcing its URL via social media channels. Sure it may skew the visits to that landing page a bit, but at least it won’t cost a click value and you are still generating pageviews.
- Online media is just the same. The ad you placed is intended to drive visitors to a landing page. Why not tweet “How cool, I just saw the ad I created on CNN.com, I’m famous!” and provide a link. This is human. It expresses an emotion that everyone can relate to and because of that, may solicit more clicks than a cold tweet like, “check out our new product”.
I won’t belabor this point anymore because there are thousands of examples. The key is that social media by itself can be effective, but social media used to juice up other tactics can be exponentially more powerful. If you have ever found yourself wondering what to tweet about, then maybe you need another campaign in your portfolio to give you something to talk about!
This week’s blog post is contributed by Shannon Rogers, Sr. New Business Executive at Web Ad.vantage. Connect with Shannon online or send him an email.
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We’re twins. I just wrote the same thing yesterday, SM is not the only game in town. It’s one piece of a very large, complex puzzle. The trick is getting the right mix of ingredients to make all the pieces work together to create the picture you want.
.-= Davina K. Brewer´s last blog ..Twitterversary: 7 things I have learned about Social Media (so far) =-.
@Davina - Good analogy; we very much agree.
Thanks for checking out our blog!
Social media assists in your site’s traffic, but it sure doesn’t create juice for PR. The good thing about social media such as Facebook is that you can get seen right away by others specially if you just put up a site.
.-= Mediekoeb´s last blog ..Tilbage til fremtiden =-.
Comment by Mediekoeb — March 8, 2010 @ 10:14 am
All the new technologies are really just like a tool bag.
To me the analogy is like a carpenter who knows his stuff and has been around for years and then begins adding “new” tools like a electric saw and then a power nailer and so on and so on. Along with that new materials. Marketing is marketing but the big difference is that now it’s more subtle and I think mostly because folks are tired of stuff being shoved down their throat and on the other side of the fence companies not having the advertising budgets they have had in the past.
.-= Jake Jacob´s last blog ..Part One: Trends in Social Media for the Coming Year =-.
Glad to see others ‘coming to their senses’. Technology is great, but there are still only 2 main components to success in any business: 1) a great & useful product; and 2) trusted relationships with potential customers. Tools that enhance these 2 basic components are vital - and everything else is just a fun distraction.
Comment by M C Coleman — March 11, 2010 @ 6:57 pm
I definitely have to agree as well. Having a well designed, user friendly website should be the staple of all marketing efforts and everything else should stem from that. Social media, SEM, PR, and even traditional media are complements to a company’s website.
.-= Katherine´s last blog ..Hello world! =-.
Comment by Katherine — March 18, 2010 @ 4:28 pm
I think any media should only be viewed as part of overall strategy, other wise it never works.
.-= Alex Sysoef´s last blog ..SEO Blogger
I think what a lot of people forget is that content is still king. Social media is a great inexpensive medium for alerting people to your content or driving new people to your content, but too many people mistake twitter or Facebook for the content substitute.
Comment by Rob Bois — May 11, 2010 @ 3:42 pm