Entering the New World of Social Media

How will marketing professionals transition from traditional marketing vehicles like live events, seminars, webinars, direct mail and email to this new landscape called social media?  From the looks of it, people are still feeling their way around it, trying to figure out what to do and how to come up with a strategy and an integrated marketing plan that covers the whole range of old and new marketing vehicles.

So what’s holding corporate marketers back?  Well, first of all, it’s still relatively new and I can see where fear can rule whenever you are starting something new.  There are so many new tools. How should a corporate marketer build a social networking presence?  How do you use blogs, communities, Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, podcasts and YouTube to effectively deliver your message?

 “Establish your strategy first and then work on your execution,” advises Lorrie Thomas, a Web Marketing Therapist and instructor at UCSB and UC Berkeley.  Don’t be paralyzed by analysis but certainly don’t jump in without any forethought.

Let’s start with blogging. According to Thomas, the six basic components of a blog strategy that corporations need to develop are:

1. Will your blog be educational?  About a niche subject?  Geared for a specific target market, age, gender or enthusiast group?   Themes do not have to encompass everything, just have a focus.
2. Write down content ideas to help keep the content creative process intact or to publish to other writers who write for your blog for corporate consistency.
3. The more you put out, the more they come. Use key phrases married together and strategically placed in headlines and links rather then key words scattered about the content.
4. Marketing is all about building relationships, corporations will miss out on connecting directly with their current and prospective customers if they don't get real with social media.

When you start thinking about social media with these key points in mind, it’s not so daunting.  Write frequently when you have something valuable to say that will serve your current and prospective customers, post it on your blog and then repurpose it on the other tools so your audience will hear the message from all your marketing vehicles. That’s powerful integrated marketing.