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.

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

Awareness, Inc.shares their new annual report on the State of Social Media Marketing – Top Areas For Social Marketing Investment in 2012…

You will notice some underlying themes in this report:

• Executives and senior managers are looking for traction in three key areas – ROI, integration of social with lead generation and sales, and expansion of social presence and reach.
• While social marketers feel they do not have the necessary resources to execute initiatives successfully, they must meet the expectations of senior management who demand to see tangible business value.Companies experienced in social marketing are moving beyond growing social presence and reach. Their focus will shift to active social media management for increased lead generation and sales.
• You will see less-experienced marketers following their visionary peers, adopting established practices as they move along the maturity continuum.

Get a copy of the report: State of Social Media Marketing

Via www.socialnomics.net

Content Marketing Beats Social Media

A report from BlogHer suggests that tech businesses targeting American women can be most effective with blog content marketing.

Content marketing campaigns including blogs can be especially useful for consumer electronics companies targeting women. A report from BlogHer found that 69 percent of adult females in the U.S. rely on blogs when they research smartphones, computers, tablets and other consumer electronics.

Social media marketing is also effective, but to a lesser degree, with 53 percent saying they turn to Facebook, Twitter or another social network for information about potential purchases. Additionally, they are sure to check manufacturer websites, but blogs weigh more heavily into their eventual purchase decisions.

Click  for highlights of the BlogHer Study.
Via www.brafton.com

No old-world icon is safe. Just in recent weeks, both Kodak and Sears have percolated back into the news, offering headline writers a dilemma borrowed from the classic Saturday Night Live Weekend Update line, “Generalíssimo Francisco Franco is still dead.”

 How long have these companies been dying? Yes, it was a surprise sometime a long time ago, that digital media was challenging Kodak and that Walmart, Target, Kohl’s, and later Amazon were making life difficult for one of America’s retailing pioneers.
Ask an American in 1990 if he could imagine a world without Kodak. Or a shopper of a world without Sears. Now, in 2012, it’s a lot easier to imagine…
Via seekingalpha.com

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

Written by Will Davis via Marketing Trenches

Don’t let your 2012 marketing approach turn into a Little Shop of Horrors–make sure you have your 2012 content plan in place.

As I sat down yesterday with a couple members of the Right Source team for our check-in on our 2012 tactical plan, I was reminded how our marketing, like that of many of our clients, is heavily dependent on content. We use the term content marketing all the time in our industry, yet to many folks outside of the industry – and to many of our potential clients – it means very little.

What I’ve realized is that a post Mike wrote nearly 2 years ago – What is Content Marketing and Why is it Hot? – is still incredibly relevant today and maybe even more so. Why?

Many People Still Need an Explanation of What Content Marketing Is

People in the industry don’t believe it, but it’s true – the term content marketing sounds great but many marketers, presidents, and CEOs have never heard it or don’t know what it means….
Via www.marketingtrenches.com

Written by Joe Pulizzi

10 amazing content marketing books that will help persuade your boss (CXO) to give you more budget for content marketing in your company….

The New Rules of Marketing & PR

I consider this David Meerman Scott book mandatory reading for all marketers.  This best seller, now published in over 25 languages, clearly states the case for why we need to think about marketing differently. A big part of that…the creation of valuable, relevant and compelling content that positions you as the expert in your industry.

Get Content Get Customers

Yes, forgive me…this is my book written with my co-author Newt Barrett.  This was the first book that really talked about the content marketing industry as we know it today and how to actually handle the changing rules (as DM Scott describes above).  The first half of the book tells you the why of content marketing…the second half is chock full of online, print and integrated case studies.

Content Rules

Where Get Content Get Customers leaves off, Content Rules ramps it up a notch, with clear instruction and motivation on everything from content strategy to newsletter creation to blogs and social media…with some amazing case studies along the way.  Really like the practical tips in this book, like how to develop a publishing schedule and ideas on “reimagining” your content across different platforms.

And, it couldn’t have been written by two better people: Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman.

eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sell

This incredible resource from Ardath Albee is one I recommend to marketers very focused on the B2B industry.  Ardath details the complex sales cycle that most B2B marketing executives deal with and the important the role that content serves in each of those stages.  Do you have a long sales cycle with multiple client touch points? If so, this book can’t lose.

Managing Content Marketing

Sorry, guilty as charged…mine again.  This time, Robert Rose leads the charge.  Simply put, if you are a marketer trying to actually develop a content marketing practice within your organization, this book will help you with the structure and process.  This is not a book for the beginner, but for the believer that wants to take the next step.
Via blog.junta42.com

Via Scoop.it – Content Marketing Now

Marketing through online storytelling and advice will only grow in importance to businesses. Here’s how to make sense of the biggest trends in content marketing. Content marketing is still in its infancy, but some practices already have gained favor and others have faded away. Below are some of the expected trends this year. Crowdsourcing for Content Creation
Crowdsourcing will be hot in 2012. AOL’s purchase last year of the Huffington Post, which has relied heavily on crowdsourcing for content creation, marked a turning point. Suddenly, it became a valid business model to tap into people’s willingness to create content for free or for low pay in return for online exposure. Now, companies of all sizes are eager to try such crowdsourcing to generate content.
Via www.entrepreneur.com

Content Marketers Can Deliver Great Information Products to a Targeted Customer Base

Fortune 500 companies have long had the technological resources and investment capital required to build sophisticated content marketing solutions—and to manage huge amounts of demographic data relating to their prospects and customer bases. Many of these firms, such as Best Buy, Proctor & Gamble, Microsoft, and Amazon.com, probably know more about us than some of our relatives do. They also do a terrific job of delivering relevant and compelling content to different segments of their prospect bases.

Smaller companies, however, have had to rely on media companies to deliver their message to their targeted buyers . This has certainly been true with print publications and, until  recently, online as well. Affordable technology is now changing all of the rules.

Just a few years ago, it would have been laughable to imagine that a very small organization could create and maintain a Web site that could be updated daily—and that would allow visitors to interact and even buy products and services. Today, this is not only possible but pervasive. In fact, a 10-person company may be able to outmarket a 10,000-person company in a carefully chosen niche.

There are four core components underlying the shift in the technological balance of power away from media giants and toward companies of all sizes:

• The ability to create sophisticated online publications such as Web sites, digital magazines, and e-newsletters
• The ability to manage huge amounts of data relating to current and future customers
• The ability to leverage social media to engage targeted customers
• The ability to do each of these simply and inexpensively

A sophisticated Web site that would have cost $500,000 in 2001 can be replicated today for $5,000.  Even solopreneurs with a modest amount of talent and training can put WordPress to use to build a blog-powered website. Ann Porter with KitchAnn Style : Unique Design for Distinctive Living delivers a simple but image rich website/blog that illustrates her design knowledge and visual sense. She did this on her own at no cost.

The same is true with the online equivalent of circulation development and management. Print publications must still invest enormous amounts of money in acquiring and retaining subscribers. But, online, mailing list and eNewsletter software that integrates with social media costs less than $100/month even for a sizeable mailing list of 10,000 or more. Constant Contact powers the NextBus monthly newsletter which reaches 1000s of transportation executives at a cost of less than $50/month. This technology powerhouse delivers sophisticated transit solutions that benefit millions of bus and rail passengers. And, their small staff and modest marketing budget can achieve results that outshine much larger organizations. They also use WordPress to power their news site.

Social media may be the ultimate leveling force as small company content marketers can use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ to build an interactive community of customers and prospects. Often, as with George Bowers Grocery in Staunton, VA, they can outcompete Kroger on Facebook in the local market. Click here to read more about their creative approach to social media. In fact, they have increased their Facebook fans/likes by almost 40% since we first wrote about them in January 2011.

Low-cost, easy-to-use Web technology and the emergence of business-friendly social media solutions now enables medium-sized manufacturers, small companies, or one-person service firms to build online content solutions that are more sophisticated than what most media companies were putting online just a few years ago.

In fact, with focus, creativity, and a little outside help, these smaller organizations often do a better job of providing targeted content that fully engages their best customers than do some of their billion-dollar competitors.