How Companies Can Get Started in Social Media Marketing

By B.L. Ochman

In 2009, it's clear that resistance is futile. Corporations can no longer avoid social media.

Millions of people are creating content in social media. Your competitors are already there. Your customers have been there for a long time.

How do you start? Forget baby steps and dipping your toe into new media. The train has left the station.

Getting started
Before you begin, consider that:

o Social media isn’t one thing – it’s a set of tools.
o Social media is not a quick fix – the results come in the long term, the same way they do with PR. In fact, social media campaigns, like PR, often start producing their best results in the third year.
o Social media is not free. It costs money to create an effective social media campaign.
o You need to drive traffic to a blog, a forum, a community, a social network. That requires time, effort and money
o You have something to say that may be of interest beyond the CEO's office or the marketing department

Lurking is Good
o Before you join the conversation, lurk. Monitor what’s being said about your company in social media -- even on weekends.
o Once you have the lay of the land, join the conversation
o Tread gently
o Remember: we’re all humans. People are what matters, not companies.

Don’t be afraid to fail. Be ready to apologize. Admit when you’ve made a mistake.

Just because it's always been done that way doesn't mean that's how it should always be done.

The alternative?
The alternative is to fall behind to rivals that are willing to take chances with interactive marketing.

What does social media marketing cost? I wrote this post in Oct. 2007, and it holds true:

“Everybody’s talking about how great social media is for marketing, but nobody’s talking about what it costs,” cry the CMOs. Verily they said: “Tell us the bottom line.”

OK, let’s tear down the wall – let’s talk about money.

The budget for an effective social media marketing campaign begins at $50K for a two to three-month period. I'm sure companies have spent less, and I know they've spent more.

I have created effective campaigns with as little as $50K, and even better ones with budgets of $500K for three months. :>)

You can measure results through a variety of metrics, including referral drill downs in your site stats; mentions on blogs and in media; comments on the content; real-time blog advertising results, and clickthroughs to your company website.

Here’s some additional reading from a variety of expert sources:
- Social Media Storm Spreads as Motrin Ad Angers Moms

- My Social Media Secret – How I Keep Up With it All

- Nine Great Reasons Your Company Should Blog

- 10 Reasons Your Company Should Not Blog

- Does Your Company Have a Social Media Participation Policy? IBM & Sun Do

- SocialMedia.com: Rules of Engagement for Blogging

- Mashable: Top 10 Reputation Management Tools Worth Paying For

- Techcrunch: Top 10 Social Media Sites of 2008

- Interactive Insights Group: Superlist of What NOT to Do in Social Media

- Seth Godin: A Year’s Worth of Popular Posts

- Chris Brogan: A Sample Social Media Toolkit

- Hugh Macleod: the social marker- the "social object" on steroids

Image – New Zealand Railways Magazine
Copyright BL Ochman all rights reserved

I like the comment about lurking, especially in the weekends. I think #motrinmoms all happened over a weekend. Imagine being that brand manager on a Monday morning

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23motrinmoms

I love the "no more dipping your toe in" line!
I had to use that line all the time when I was w/in a corporate environment and it drove me nuts! Not one "C" level wanted to listen or see the impact that we could make from ANY SM efforts...the train left last week & they wanted to walk. sigh. (side note: they filed Ch.7 & closed their doors this week).
Thank God I got laid off after pulling teeth for 10 months & landed at a small company where the CEO totally "gets it" and is involved in "it".
Wahooo!

OK, my eyes are boggling. How do you spend $50,000 on a social media campaign? Sounds like you should remove a zero, so I'm verrrry curious.

Ari - I am talking about a professionally produced campaign, like the online treasure hunt I did for Up Your Budget in 2005, which had a $500K budget for four weeks.

It involved professionally produced videos every day for four weeks, a website, graphic design, animated cartoons by gapingvoid, blog, a newsletter, blog advertising, travel, PR, hosting, a LOT of bandwidth, SEO, legal costs,$16K in prize money, and so on. Plus my fee for creation, production and execution of a campaign that got a million uniques in four weeks and 10 million pageviews.

You can read the case study here http://www.whatsnextblog.com/archives/2006/10/case_study_up_your_budget_i_2005_created_by_bl_ochman.asp

And frankly, that campaign was was under-priced considering the time, effort, and results that went into it and came out of it.

The entire campaign cost them less than one 30-second TV spot, as the COM noted in the NY Times advertising column.
BL

As everyone I am curious about your marketing campaign at 50k or 500k? Do you have some examples??

Guillaume - click on the link in the comments above for a case study of the 2005 Up Your Budget Treasure Hunt that I created and produced for Cendant.

For approx $50K I did a contest for author Karen Quinn's book, Wife in the Fast Lane. It is no longer online and I do not have a case study available but it contributed to the success of the book, which will become a movie in the not distant future.

Let me say it again - social media campaigns are NOT free, or cheap. At least not if you want them to have significant impact.

The old method of advertising is interactive marketing. The term is misleading. Most people think it means that there is some type of interaction on the part of the person advertised to, and there is. But, it is not conversational. Instead, the advertiser wants you to interact with their campaign in a specific set of steps. Following the call to action and visiting a website for instance. It's the push to make you do something. Live this image. Buy this now.

Social Media Marketing is just the opposite. It's the pull of the tribe. The tribe already has your trust so the actions they take are ones you align with. On a larger scale, it's the allure of belonging in the group as you take action together. "I am doing this so why don't you do it with me?" On an individual level, the attraction is to behave the same way to get the same results that benefits your fellow tribeswoman or tribesman. "She looks hot! I want to look hot too. I want to go to her hairstylist" and you do. Social Media Marketing uses the power of attraction.

While advertising tries to use the same tactic, with a billboard for instance, of a gorgeous woman telling you the benefits of the salon, it doesn't have the same impact because it's pushing you to go. It is not pulling you in as a trusted friend. Your friends have your best interests at heart and advertisers do not. Social Media Marketing is based on building trust and that foundation will make Social Media a dominant player in Marketing.