Online Marketing Blog

I had nice back and forth with Brian Clark of copyblogger on Twitter last week about direct marketing and social media.  Ultimately it was more an issue of perspective and semantics but there were some great points about the intersection of direct marketing on the social web. I’ve been an advocate for several years as have others in the social media consulting space, that the social web is not a place for direct marketing. In the past I’ve even posted a fairly good comparison of the difference between direct marketing and social media marketing.

Brian’s position via our Twitter discussion was that social media is exactly that, marketing directly to consumers - a great point. My perspective is that social media is no place for direct marketing messages.

Development of a content marketing strategy that speaks to the target audience plays a key role in successful execution of an overall online marketing program. Companies that embrace the social web as part of their marketing mix need to consider the content created within social media channels just as much as corporate web site content.

Whether you communicate to your audience via a blog, Twitter or social networking sites like Facebook, the only true way to build relationships with a growing network is to listen, engage and provide content they find valuable.

When developing a social media content strategy, start by asking questions like: “What does my network find valuable?”.

Numerous companies are losing vast amounts of revenue due to their web sites doing poorly in the search engines.  Web sites that are not easy to find via search miss out on attracting new customers as well as repeat customers that use Google to navigate sites they already know about. Is the same true for web sites that are not social media friendly?

People discover new sites through search, but also through recommendations made via email, word of mouth and through social media content. Making a web site social media friendly will facilitate the saving and sharing of content with others, extending reach and facilitating engagement. 

Learn Social Media Strategy, Tactics and Build a Roadmap for Your Business with Social Media Smarts - A Practical 2 Day Workshop from TopRank & The DMA.

The benefit from a firm grasp of social media for companies is impossible to ignore. Whether you work in marketing, advertising, public relations or interactive, there are distinct competitive advantages for both individuals and businesses from a better understanding of the social web.

This post provides specific advice from in-house social media marketers including: Dell, Comcast, HP, Wells Fargo, Intel, Best Buy, General Mills, Ford, UPS, Home Depot, Cirque du Soleil and a mix of SMM consultants/agencies: Altimeter Group, Crayon, Ogilvy 360, Future Works, Doe Anderson, New Marketing Labs and others. Advice includes justifying investment in social media strategy, how to decide on tactics and measuring success.

Review of the 2009 Social Media Marketing & PR Benchmark Guide from Marketingsherpa

A new report on social media has been released from Marketingsherpa with Senior Analyst, Sergio Balegno, as lead author.  Over 1,800 marketing and PR professionals responded to the survey resulting in one of the most complete, data supported guides on social media published to date.

There are numerous books, seminars and “experts” touting social media advice for marketing and PR professionals. Much of that advice is based on experience and even more is based on wishful thinking. This report takes a structured approach to data collection and analysis offering readers the advantage of understanding what works and what doesn’t when it comes to social media marketing and PR.

[Editor's Note: This guest post coverage of a recent Marketingsherpa webinar comes from TopRank's SEO Designer Thomas McMahon and Account Coordinator Kristen Hebert.]

Are companies engaging in social media? Are they monitoring their brand? What’s a social media press release? These were a few of the topics covered in Marketingsherpa’s recent “Engaging Bloggers, Journalists and Customers” webinar featuring Todd Defren from SHIFT Communications and Marketingsherpa’s Sergio Balegno discussing new ways journalists are using social media.

MarketingSherpa surveyed 1800 people from both small and large, B2B and B2C companies. In their findings, three out of four companies surveyed feel that social media is changing the way companies communicate. Details of this research can be found in the new Social Media Marketing and PR: Benchmarks and Best Practices report.

With concerns over the recession and its impact on marketing, we decided to run a TopRank Reader Poll to discover reader (and their networks) preferences for digital marketing tactics in 2009.  Companies world-wide are cutting costs as well as looking for creative, high impact and accountable marketing.  Our amazing readers both on Online Marketing Blog and followers at @leeodden helped uncover the top tactics.

Over the past 11 days 532 readers have cast 1559 votes for their 3 top digital marketing tactics for 2009 with Blogging, Twitter and Search Engine Optimization topping the list.  Equally interesting was that out of the top 10 tactics, 6 fall into the category of Social Media Marketing. See the full list below along with other statistics about where voters came from as well as info about the readership of Online Marketing Blog.

Social media is hot, just take a look at Google Trends to see the comparison between topics like “search marketing” being eclipsed by “social media” in terms of search volume and news references - at least according to Google. Along with all that “hotness”, there’s good and bad when it comes to the way companies are beginning to engage social media channels. 

On Twitter, the difference between mentions of  ”search marketing” and “social media” are even more pronounced. Of course this is by no means a formal assessement, but it gives you an idea of what people on the web are paying attention to and in some cases, what they expect.

Social Media Smarts Interview with Dave Evans, Author of Social Media Marketing An Hour A  Day

Recently I came across the new book by Dave Evans, Social Media Marketing An Hour a Day. It’s one of the few marketing books I actually purchased in 2008 because it seemed thorough (as far as a book can be on a fast changing topic) and since so many publishers send us free copies to review.

The notion of taking a slice of time per day to conduct social media marketing activities is such spot-on advice, that I wanted to bring more insights from the book author, Dave Evans, to our readers.  

In this interview Dave talks about the genesis of the book, thoughts on social media strategy, innovation, building a business case, practical examples and measuring success. Enjoy!

A while back I had a Twitter discussion with a few smart Minnesota based marketers, @cbensen, @albertmaruggi and @bestbuyCMO about the importance of customer service and community building that turned to a variety of ancillary benefits. Connie mentioned that community building is a long term investment that continues to pay dividends. Albert pointed out that SEO & community building can be 2 separate tactics with SEO having nothing to do with community. Barry wanted more of an explanation, which motivated this long overdue post.

An increasing number community managers have become visible within social media sites like Twitter, on blogs and Facebook from various sized companies. We’ve even interviewed people with those types of responsibilities from Dell and Comcast.  I’ve been thinking about how the content creation and outreach efforts of a community manager can also be of benefit to an organization’s search engine optimization efforts. 

Central to the notion of effective social media participation is the ability to create, publish and share content. The sheer volume of information on the topic of social media marketing makes filtering and prioritizing what’s most important to a specific organization a challenging task.

There’s a lot of excitement from marketers and companies but not everyone is exactly sure how to go about it.

I think it’s important to focus on the key components of what it takes to deploy an effective social media strategy individually and as a whole. By understanding the social web as it relates to fundamental marketing principles, tactics, tools and best practices, you can create a framework or roadmap for the development of a working strategy.

One of the opportunities from speaking at the Pubcon conference in Las Vegas recently was meeting many client side social media marketing practitioners. Jessica Berlin, one of my co-panelists and social media manager from Cirque du Soleil, offered excellent insights into online reputation management and social media. I’ve invited her to take part in our “Social Media Smarts‘ series of interviews with social media marketing practitioners.

Jess has worked with Cirque du Soleil as a publicist and now as a social media marketing manager. She’s active on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and has received kudos from social media kingmakers like Chris Brogan, who offers an insightful perspective on Jessica as a “trust agent” for Cirque du Soleil and a great story on what to do with 100 bloggers in Las Vegas.