Social Media is an important, growing channel in the world of online marketing. Certainly indicated by the number of attendees crammed into this afternoon’s session at SES New York.
The panel for the session included moderation duties handled by Erik Qualman from EF Education and the following speakers: Jennifer Laycock, Liana Evans, Tamera Kremer and William Flaiz.
From the impromptu polling during the session, the majority of people are already leveraging social media as a marketing channel in some way.
There are organizations that are built for this type of marketing. They produce the right kind of content, make it shareable and are willing to test new channels. The Smart Kit puzzles site is a perfect example. (If you are a competitive person, don’t click as you’ll not be able to stop. :))
Others organizations are not inherently built for social media, not because of business models but because of content creation models.
It’s not only difficult to get anything social approved within such organizations, but the conversations on the path to social media can be painful.
For the attendees, both inhouse and agency, in the audience looking for the WHY to social media, Li Evans provided some great ones.
CREATE
1. Opportunities to connect and engage the target audience
2. Buzz around content, products, services, etc
INCREASE
1. Traffic to the website
2. Links to the website
3. Rankings in the SERPs (search engine result pages)
I find one of the biggest push backs on social is companies are afraid of what users are going to say about them.
Most organizations are employing the ‘ignorance is bliss’ way of thinking and ignoring that users are talking about their brand anyway.
It is important to know where your audience is conversing online, what they are saying and get involved.
Cliché as it may sound, companies shouldn’t focus on the bad review, but rather how they respond. Bad reviews are going to happen, it’s part of business. What doesn’t have to happen is companies ignoring conversations in which they can have great impact on the most targeted of target audiences.
Enough of the negative. There are wonderfully positive conversations about brands in the social media space and this is an untapped resource for great content.
We consistently work with clients to take the good and milk it for all its worth, whether media coverage, client testimonial, analyst review, the list goes one.
The positive information should be leverage throughout additional marketing channels to increase credibility with the target audience.
Work with your company/clients to be glass half full kind of people regarding social media because if you are, your glass can be full of results.
You provided some excellent fundamentals for social media blogging content.
Not to mention, you were so right about Smart Kit puzzles.
Thanks for the information.
You’re so right, damn I told you the glass is half full!
We just launched a our site (online company)and for every positive comment we hear we get 6-10 not so positive comments. What a way to learn!
Great insight on social media blogging! THANKS!
Oops, my curious nature took over me and made me click on the Smart Kit puzzles link – now my competitive nature has taken over.
I hope my guilty nature kicks in soon…
It’s my understanding that taking full advantage of social media marketing requires deep pockets, making this something
that only businesses can afford to do.
Is social media marketing a plausible option for the average website owner?
Thanks,
Dan
http://danielmcgonagle.name
Dan, I do not think that social media marketing is a destination but a variety of tools that you use to get closer to your audience. Pick one of them and learn how to use it, then you can add more if your audience is biting.
Social media is important in marketing online and offline businesses. It should not be relied upon as the sole source of marketing efforts however, as more and more marketers use these groups the advertisements become diluted. Marketers will have to create a portfolio of efforts in order to continue to succeed. I personally recommend Rasof to help online business owners increase their page rank in order to enhance organic traffic from Google. It’s a nice way to be found by someone that is interested. Thank you for your article I enjoyed reading it.
I think it’s telling that there’s no reference to social media’s role in conversions. Search engine rankings are valuable, click-thrus are valuable, and conversations with customers (such that they actually happen) are useful, but it sounds like the jury is still out on whether social media lead to sales. I suspect they do…but I’m curious to hear others’ views.
This is very interesting! Social media marketing is indeed crucial in any business, be it online or offline. I have enjoyed reading this very insightful post. Very engaging and informative. Thanks for sharing. 🙂
Scott, I think that using different methods to format your content (social media) allows you to offer choices to your audience. Seth Goodin said that we cannot persuade anyone to do business with us during the search PROCESS. What we can do is gain attention by being high on the SERPs and OFFER OPTIONS. With Googles Universal Search our blog, articles, press releases, video’s, etc CAN be found on the SERPs. Then you can offer a potential customer a way to access the message via a format that they like. THEN you can persuade.
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Mario, your point is an interesting one. It could appear to be a fool proof approach, if there is such a thing.