Social Media: Fact or Fantasy?

Consider this article in the context of the previous blog entry, on the evolution of email marketing.

There are those pundits that have been proclaiming email to be on the decline, with social media set to be the new black (a term I borrowed from an advertising campaign).

Yes, social media may be all the rage, but should we be wildly allocating resources, at the expense of email?

Well, that is a question we would all like a definitive answer to.

Fortunately a company called Social Twist, an embryonic business that has experienced a meteoric rise to fame in the social media sharing widget space (think AddThis), recently released the results of one of their surveys.

They decided to analyse the social media sharing behaviour, of the most recent 10 million referral messages. The results are enlightening.

Email and instant messaging constitute 84% of all content shared across the internet. Of the email providers, Yahoo constituted 44% followed by MSN at 25%, and then GMail at 19%. GMail came as a surprise to me.

Email constitutes 59% of all content shared across the internet

As for the much hyped social networking channels? In totality, these only constituted 14% of all content shared across the internet, with Facebook being the proverbial giant at 11%, which is  more or less on a par with Yahoo Messenger, the instant messaging service. So Facebook has become a serious contender.

But what about Twitter? Gasp.

Twitter constitutes a mere 0.70% of all content shared across the internet.

Another one that is so small, as to be almost insignificant, is LinkedIN, at 0.14% of all content shared. The report, known as Social Media Sharing Trends 2009, provides a lot more detail, and is well worth a read. You can access it online, or download a pdf version which I created for convenience.

The take away, for me, is that it is always important to monitor the trends, before you go and throw the baby out with the bath water. Email remains the tool of choice. Twitter may well be an up and coming medium, but for now, it is probably best utilised to create hype and as a traffic generator, given how rapidly tweets are indexed by the major search engines.

Whilst on the point of indexing, bear in mind that email and instant messaging fall outside the net, so to speak. They may constitute the largest media, as regards sharing across the internet is concerned, but this sharing is driven by the end user. There is not much of an active role for marketers to play. But if you look at the active mediums, which constitues the social networking mediums, then Facebook is by far the largest.

So email remains as relevant today as it ever was.

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Email Marketing: An Evolutionary Tale

I suspect 2010 will be all a twitter (pun intended) regarding social media, and how it purports to enhance your relationships with your clients. A lot of it is hype, but no doubt, the way we communicate with our clients, and the manner in which we promote ourselves has evolved enormously.

In the beginning, well almost, we interacted with prospects face-to-face (an expensive, but active method), and obtained their contact information, which we then loaded into a database.

Eventually we realised, hey, we can also obtain this information via our websites (an affordable, but passive method), and have it automatically load into our database too.

This was when email newsletters exploded, and the premise upon which most email service providers (ESPs) established their businesses.

But the problem was that the process was one-way, and all communications were in the form of bulk messages. It was assumed that all prospects were at the same point in the sales cycle, and that they all had homogenous needs.

Fortunately that has all changed; we have evolved.

STOP

We have?

Well okay, most of us are still stuck in 2005. I frequently hear that many people would like to migrate to a communication strategy that is social media aware, but they cannot figure out what is relevant, how to go about it or who to turn to. Let's discuss these important points.

Consider the above diagram, which was a tough task to keep simple, as the true form is more matrix like. There are many hundreds of social media sites, serving a myriad purposes; I have chosen a few of the more common ones, to demonstrate how an evolved communication strategy should be established.

Online marketing serves the same purpose as traditional marketing, namely to perform as an effective component of your marketing mix. More specifically, to contribute to your promotion efforts (remember the 4 P's of marketing?) in a cost efficient way. Additionally, it serves to perpetually sustain top-of-the-mind brand awareness, so as to facilitate repeat business.

So how do we create and/or maintain this awareness?

Well for starters, get you head around the fact that you HAVE TO engage in dialogue. You need to offer value-adding information in exchange for actionable data. This is done through a combination of social media sites and direct communication. There are two mediums, used effectively, to gather actionable data; email (through the use of surveys) and telephone (through the use of a live operator). I know you can use two-way sms, but it isn't a medium of choice, due to recipient billing sensitivity. All your efforts must ultimately lead to the collection of actionable data, through the heavy use of these feedback mediums and finally, a transaction.

Now, as regards your combination of the myriad social media sites. These must all play a supporting role, all in a somewhat different way. Their primary purpose is brand promotion and awareness, and although you can do all of these things on your website, you will never get the same kind of search engine exposure. So it's kinda like investment diversification; spread it around. One of the end results must be the capturing of prospect contact details, which will allow your nurturing campaign to kick in, ultimately progressing towards a transaction. 

Instead of a newsletter, which is effectively lost to the outside world, you use a blog (Blogger, Wordpress or other). The search engines do a great job at indexing blog articles, so this already places you at an enhanced advantage. Let's not forget that a blog can also use a subscription form, to capture prospect contact details, which can be automatically loaded to your database.

When you research for your blog, invariably it involves reading a lot of source material. Some of this would be of interest to your prospects. So use a reader (Google Reader or other), bundle your sources together and share these articles with your prospects. Your public page gets indexed by the search engines as well.

Then convert your blog articles to pdf, and host online (Calameo, Scribd or other). These articles also get indexed; yes, there is a duplication, but it will catch prospects that do not find you via your blog. Plus, it gives the added advantage of providing a downloadable version. Also, don't overlook providing powerpoint presentations or pdf documents that may be of use to a prospect; manuals, expert opinion, case studies, surveys etc.

Anything that you do, be it blogging, uploading documents, hosting an event, launching a new product, remember to post a one line notice to Twitter. Twitter is an enigma to many. It is simply a 140 (designed for mobile use) character way of sending brief messages. Unlike sms, your twitter messages get indexed by the search engines. So if clearly written, and using a url shortener (Bit.ly or other), prospects can click a link and be diverted to a site of interest.

The same can be said of Facebook and LinkedIn; although you are usually more circumspect regarding the type of news that you upload to these sites. Facebook is usually better for interacting with prospects, and has the added advantages of being able to be an active medium (it can email fans), and it can capture prospect contact details, via a subscription form. LinkedIN has similar advantages, but is best used when targeting a business audience.

Then, of course, a picture tells a thousand words. It always enhances your communicaion if you can include a link to a video (You Tube or other), or to pictures and/or photos (Picasa or other) of relevant material. With photos, it is usually a good idea to show pictures with clients interacting with your brand.

Summary

You need to put it all together in a way that it simple enough for you to maintain. The glue is your email marketing. You use the social media sites to promote your company, and to drive prospects to provide you with information. This information, in turn, feeds your communication campaign, which perpetually encourages your prospects to engage with your brand. But do not restrict yourself to email only. Vary your contact media; use snail mail for birthdays for example. Don't allow your communication strategy to become predictable and mundane.

Finally, if it still remains overwhelming then contact Dialogue Marketing. We will put it all together for you, show you what and how to maintain the strategy (or do it for you).

Find a downloadable copy of the article here.

Drip Marketing: What Is It?

Geez, it seems marketers like to busy themselves coining new phrases, as if they have discovered a new light bulb, when in reality all they have done is highlight the obvious.

Drip Marketing is another of those phrases; as is Closed-Loop Marketing, but we will discuss that one next time.

Quite simply Drip Marketing is the technique that is applied to prospects, to nurture them towards a state where they are ready to transact. You might recall we discussed lead nurturing previously.

Essentially, Drip Marketing is a planned series of timed messages, that are dispatched to a targeted set of prospects. These dispatched messages could be in any form; the most common being email, sms, postcards, snail mail and the like. The purpose is to communicate product information and/or helpful advice, in order to keep your brand top-of-the-mind, so that when the prospect is ready to transact, they will be more inclined to remember, and select you.

That's it, short and sweet.

The good thing about Drip Marketing is that it forces you to actively create a system that caters for your prospects; which means actually thinking about the process.

Usually you would be best advised to use an automated service, due to the affordability thereof. It's also good to select a service provider who can help you establish you Drip Marketing strategy, and who will be able to customise your effort. Nobody likes to get messages that appear to have been designed for the masses. Make a little effort, and personalise them a tad.

Download a printable version here.