Social media marketing is at risk of becoming the same nebulous (and useless) marketing method as TV and radio advertising.

Lisa Drew of LyricalBiz.com, a firm that creates blogs and WordPress websites for small business, sent me a blog post yesterday from eMarketer. It intrigued me because it presented a graph showing that social media marketing budgets are on the rise.

While it’s good news from a marketer’s “budget” standpoint, I am concerned that too many marketers are simply telling their clients that they “must use social media” without giving the client a clear-cut reason or a plan directly tying the social media campaign to a product or service.

Social media marketing must be traceable and measurable or it’s a waste of time and money for business. Which is pretty much how I feel about all marketing.

All social media marketing must have a purpose. There are a number of terrific uses you can put social media to:

• Instead of developing a new product or service in secret and then hoping you can market or sell it, use social media to engage potential clients and customers right from the beginning to get their feedback and input. That way, by the time you’re ready to go to market, you have a ready fan base who feel like the product or service is theirs and will immediately buy it.
• A great example of “direct response” social media marketing is the use of Twitter by Kogi Korean BBQ-To-Go in LA. They have trucks roaming the streets of LA selling Korean tacos. They use Twitter to keep raving fans up-to-date on where there truck is at all times. They also use it to tell fans about company news and recipes posted on their blog or website.

I once read a story about a new plant manager who was brought in to increase production on the plant floor. He didn’t offer bonuses, he didn’t “give speeches to the troops,” and he didn’t threaten, cajole or harangue them. Instead, after the first shift finished, he asked the foreman what their production was.

The foreman told him 385. The plant manager told the foreman to print the numbers with chalk as big as he could on the wall by the locker room. And leave the chalk sitting on the floor.

The second shift saw the numbers as they came online and started asking what they meant. The foreman casually let it drop that some “show-off” on the first shift was bragging about how many parts they had produced. He told them to ignore it.

At the end of their shift, someone from the second shift scratched out the number and posted their results, which was higher. Someone from the third shift asked the guy what he was doing. “Some clown on first shift was bragging about their production run. We kicked their butts.”

At the end of the third shift, a new number was scribbled on the wall. I think you can figure out what happened from there. Just keep thinking Tom Sawyer.

So the question begs itself, could you use social media to do something similar within your company? Perhaps generate a little healthy competition?

Bob McClain or WordsmithBob, has been a website copywriter in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, since 2000. He has focused on developing new, more effective approaches to web writing, web content, web copywriting and Search Engine Optimization. Starting with a BA in Technical Communication and a minor in Creative Writing from Metro State University in St. Paul, McClain has worked diligently to end the use of "corp-speak" and "technospeak" online. His approach is to “humanize” the Web, using real information to guide people to buy rather than turning websites into advertisements that people can easily ignore. McClain is also the creator of Cheap SEO Website Marketing, a website devoted to helping people with the best solutions to DIY SEO at an affordable cost with tips and software reviews. More at Cheap SEO Website Marketing

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Originally posted 2009-03-24 08:44:51. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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