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Internet Marketing Strategy Social Media Marketing Part 1

11/29/2007

Social Media are those online tools that are deployed by an organization as part of their Internet marketing strategy to engage their target audiences in “conversation”. This often involves creating web content such as blogs, chat rooms, forums and wikis (a web site where the user can add content). Social media is basically pull marketing—where the consumer “pulls” the message in as in searching for a product or service on the Internet.

Push marketing is not working as well as it has in the past due to a major change in consumer behavior. Traditional advertising is an example of “push” marketing where the message is pushed by the advertiser to the target audience. Consumers are not buying this anymore (both business to consumer and business to business) and want information from “people like themselves”. In a study from McKenzie Worldwide it was found that 67% of consumers prefer to get their purchasing facts from other consumers—not "communicators”.

The old days of shoving massive amounts of “corporate speak” down consumers’ throats is gone forever. This has had major adverse consequences for traditional media with declining circulations and massive layoffs.

Welcome to the new age of social media aka web 2.0.

Social media marketing includes viral marketing or word of mouth marketing. It is an extension of the brand into the ever growing number of social media sites such as YouTube (a Google property), Facebook and MySpace (part of News Corporation). The goal is to create and extend the organization’s profile, leading to improved online visibility and greater brand awareness.

Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. The social media sites typically use tools like message boards, forums, podcasts, bookmarks, communities, wikis and weblogs.

A vital part of a social media strategy is brand monitoring—there is an online conversation going on and wise marketers will want to know what is being said and by whom (online brand management). Brands no longer control the messaging. This is scaring the living daylights out of brand managers and PR departments.

There are many online communities and the list grows daily. They don’t want advertising messages and may even ban you if they are used. Essentially they respond to PR techniques. Are businesses ready to move promotional budgets from paid advertising to public relations?

Social media is a great opportunity to take part in the online conversation which allows you to be directly in touch with your customers in a conversation—the way they now prefer to connect with you. Do you have a line item on your overall budget for social media? There will need to be some internal changes to embrace the benefits and challenges of Web 2.0. Companies are taking advantage of this major shift in consumer behavior by being ‘out there’ (online) to meet thier customers/prospects, and are generating interaction with new customers/prospects to build a community.

Your brand is a conversation—you no longer own it. Like it or not, you share it with the online community. Your Internet marketing strategy must now include social media.

About the Author:

 

Doug Hay is the co-founder and CEO of Expansion Plus Inc, a leading Los Angeles-based Internet marketing and public relations firm. E+ was an early adopter of these new technologies while leveraging the principals’ multi decades of experience in marketing, public relations, sales and business development. For more information about Doug Hay and Expansion Plus, please visit Expansion Plus.

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