Social media marketing is a trend, not a fad.  Moreover, it’s a terrific extension of your content marketing strategy.

What’s clear from current research is that when we evaluate social media, we are not talking about the marketing longevity equivalent of the hula hoop or the Lambada.

Social media marketing is here to stay.  If you are not already active in venues such as a business blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Slideshare, and YouTube, you should be asking yourself whether it’s way past time to jump in with both virtual feet.

The answer to the question is yes with an important caveat…

…Before making the commitment to one or many possible social media outlets, it is vital to determine whether:

• you understand the target audience that you intend to reach
• you have something valuable to communicate to that target audience
• you have someone with the time, skill, and enthusiasm to execute a consistent social media program–either inside or outside your organization
• you will make the time to listen and respond to your social media audience.

There is nothing sadder than a business blog whose most recent post was a year ago. And, there is nothing less impressive than a Facebook fan page with only a few fans and hardly any messages to or from those fans.

Yes, social media can be an extremely effective marketing tool. But, you will need to make a serious company commitment to ensure that it is effective for your organization.

Social Media is the First Cousin to Content Marketing

Social media is really all about content marketing. We have often written about the need to develop a content marketing mindset. This requires companies to think like publishers.  And, that sounds an awful lot like social media as Wikipedia defines it:

Social media is information content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It’s a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologue (one to many) into dialog (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers.

Because social media is in a constant state of flux with new technologies and tools coming and going you might feel intimidated at ever trying to understand the essence of social media. But as Paul Gillen explains in his excellent book Secrets of Social Media Marketing, “there is nothing mysterious about social media. The practices that we all use to maintain meaningful relationships in our personal lives apply just as well online. It’s just that the media is different.”

In a sense, social media goes back to the earliest times, when people gathered together in the marketplace and shared information about crops, food, neighbors, the evil King, and rumors of a scary dragon lurking in the forest.

In the 21st century, we talk about the same sort of stuff, but much of it has moved online and become highly mobile thanks to the Internet, iPhones, iPads, and a host of other leading-edge devices.

Just a few years ago, social media was a relatively marginal phenomenon. Today,  just like the Internet, it is absolutely mainstream and therefore belongs as a core part of your marketing mix.

Five Reasons Why You Should Begin Your Social Media Marketing Efforts Now:

1. Your customers are using it to make buying decisions. Millions of web users, both in the business to consumer and business-to-business markets, are reading blogs visiting Facebook, and tweeting daily. They are relying increasingly on social media for buying information in both the b2b and b2c worlds.

2. Smart news organizations are with the social media program. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal and your local newspaper have made social media fundamental to how they learn and how they report.  If it’s good enough for their information gathering and sharing where it really counts, it’s certainly good enough for the rest of us.
3. Your competitors are using it. You’re almost certainly paying attention to your smartest competition.  I’d be surprised if most of them haven’t already dived headfirst into social media waters.  Organizations as diverse as law firms, interior designers, real estate agents, and roofing companies are using blogs, podcasts, videos, and user communities such as Facebook to demonstrate their expertise and thought leadership. Don’t let those tough competitors outmarket you via social media.
4. It can be your most cost effective marketing strategy.  The required financial investment in creating a blog, for example, can be close to zero.  The real investment will be in time and thought required to craft a content marketing strategy which provides valuable information to your customers and prospects.  You may need to hire specific content creation resources either internally or externally.
5. Your old-style marketing is less and less effective. Because buyer behavior has changed, you cannot expect traditional advertising and public relations alone to drive buyers to your business as it did a decade ago.  You may certainly want to use those traditional tools to drive them to your online home. That’s where you can prove to prospective customers that you are a reliable supplier who can be trusted, based on your knowledge and understanding of your their problems.  A regular blog, a Facebook fan page, an uploaded Slideshare presentation or a series of informative YouTube videos may be just the ticket to prove that you are the best choice to provide essential solutions.

Summing Up the Social Media Marketing Imperative

You can use core social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, both effectively and inexpensively to compete against competitors large and small. But, as with every content marketing effort, it’s vital to make a consistent long-term commitment and to build your social media strategy on a solid understanding of your target customers. By understanding those customers, you will be able to communicate and to interact with those customers in a meaningful way.

We’ll be writing more extensively about the how and why of social media marketing tools in the weeks ahead.

Great Content Marketing Advice from the Original Guerilla Marketer

I get lots of useless emails from allegedly savvy marketers. But, much more often than not I can count on Jay Conrad Levinson for succinct, actionable, affordable advice.

Here’s the latest gem from his Guerilla Marketing email:

Let your clients on hold learn how to connect to your Web site for pertinent information. Encourage the people who answer your phones to give your Web address to every caller who identifies himself or herself as an Internet user. Think of your Website as 24-hour answering service. Assure your callers that they can always phone your store or office for information, but let them know they now have a Web alternative as well, open 24 hours every day.

You’ll find lots of great stuff on his site: www.gmarketing.com

Thanks, Jay.

Lessons on writing headlines from legendary ad man David Ogilvy are relevant to writers of blogs, websites, articles and social media posts.

Written by Joanne Costin

I think advertising man David Ogilvy would have enjoyed online marketing for the instantaneous feedback it provides.  His rules about advertising weren’t based on opinion, but years of research.

As he famously said:

“Five times as many people read the headline as the body copy. If you haven’t done some selling in your headline, you will have wasted 80 cents out of your client’s dollar.”

Rule No. 1: “The headline is the ticket on the meat.”

Ogilvy promoted the use of keywords in the headline,  before keywords were keywords.
“If you are selling a remedy for bladder weakness, display BLADDER WEAKNESS in the headline. If you want mothers to read your advertisement, display MOTHERS is your headline.”

Rule No. 2: “Every headline should appeal to the reader’s self-interest.”

Ogilvy insisted headlines provide a benefit to the reader. If your headlines aren’t offering a benefit, scrap them.  A reader may not care that your machine has new engine (feature), what he cares about is five percent greater fuel efficiency (benefit).
Via contentforbiz.com

A Great Video Points the Way to Effective Use of RSS

Written by Paul Mosensen

An overview on Google Reader, and how to manage RSS feeds, folders, share buttons, and integrate with LinkedIn, Google Alerts, Google+, and Twitter……

Via www.youtube.com

Image hazel.estrada via Flickr CC

[This is a perfect example of what John is discussing. We have curated his post via Scoop.It.]

Written by John Jantsch

You need lots of content, you know that, but you also know that content creation is one of the more time intensive marketing activities you have to tackle.

While you do need to create your own content as the foundation for your total content and teaching strategy, you can – and should – supplement your content with that from other people.

One of the best services marketers can provide these days is to act as a filter for all that’s being produced out there and aggregate the best of the best on behalf of our communities.

Finding and sharing consistently high quality, relevant content and adding insight to this information is not only a great way to increase the volume of your content, it’s a great way build trust in the value of your content.

Here are 5 ways to go about it: Go to DuctTape Marketing Blog

Just When You Hoped Things Might Slow Down, They Speed Up

The smart folks at CMO.com understand the need to make these rapidly changing trends understandable and actionable.

What words come to mind when thinking about the digital marketing landscape? Complicated? A deep morass? Or a land of opportunity?

No doubt, digital marketing has experienced a huge uptick in the number of channels and devices at its disposal, further underscoring the need for marketers to determine the best allocation of their budgets. Shifting priorities and increased competition have not made life any easier.

As I see it the biggest shift is to mobile devices, particulary the iPad.  The iPad is quickly becoming both pervasive and practical for daily business use. That means that content marketers have to change the way they deliver content to our customers. Content must be mobile friendly–and increasingly interactive and actionable.

Here’s the entire Digital Marketing Trends Infographic:

You can read more great stuff and download the full size Infograhic at: CMO.com

The Power of Storytelling for Content Marketers from Robert Rose

In this video post, Robert Rose, co-author with Joe Pullizzi of ‘Managing Content Marketing,’ discusses what brands can learn from big-screen storytelling, as well as from Joseph Campbell: creating ‘heroic’ content that speaks to your audience.
Via www.contentmarketinginstitute.com

This past September, I was honored to speak at Content Marketing World. My talk was called “Storytelling Secrets From Hollywood.” Since that time, I’ve had a few people ask me for the slides. Inspired by these requests, I’ve been having some fun learning about video-editing programs. So here, I thought I’d go one step further and develop a little video for CMI readers.

The video embedded below is the basis of my presentationat Content Marketing World 2011.  I’ve since added some more visual elements to the storytelling — including clips from some of the movies I reference. (Hopefully, I’ve made them a little more fun to watch). Of course, if you’re interested in viewing the on-demand version of my talk, it’s available here.

Watch Robert’s video below:

Read Robert’s complete article here: Content Marketing Storytelling: Secrets from the Big Screen 

Via Marketing Clout

You wouldn’t ask a violinist to conduct an orchestra. He may be an extraordinary musician, but what does he know about conducting or about how each section comes across to the audience? Will the audience come back? Chances are, probably not.

Similarly, your typical copywriter, while highly skilled in his area, won’t necessarily have an understanding of writing content for integrated digital marketing campaigns.

Old school copywriters are still in demand for offline campaigns. The new breed of digital writers, however, understands how to write for the web. For example, they know how to:

• Make your content searchable and high ranking for search engine optimisation (SEO) using key words and links without compromising on content quality
• Make copy digestible, using short, punchy sentences, subheadings and segmentation
• How to write for social media with the right tone, timing and level of interaction

Via www.marketingclout.co.uk

Written by Melanie Brooks

Dave and Carrie Kerpen started their marketing company,   Likeable Media, after they created a buzz selling sponsorships to their New York wedding. They raised $100,000 for their wedding and $20,000 for a charity

The couple, who both had marketing backgrounds, were asked by so many people “what’s next” after their wedding promotional stunt that they started their own company, which today has offices in New York, Boston, Chicago, and Mexico City.

Dave appears in this video on Inc.com talking about how he got started as well as sharing some tips on what makes someone good at social media marketing. While I wish there was less “wedding” and more “tips for 2012”—as the title suggests—I did like what he had to say about the kind of person who excels at social media marketing.

The most successful person in social media is the same person who is the most successful person at a cocktail party. —Dave Kerpen

Dave has a few fantastic tips that are worth considering in your freelance business…
Via freelanceswitch.com

The Top 5 Things Marketers Should Never Say About Social MediaBusiness InsiderHere are some things I resolve to never hear from a brand manager or product marketer or any marketer about social media in 2012…
Via www.businessinsider.com