Thursday, February 19, 2009

Explaining Social Media and Marketing in 50 Tweets

How do social media and marketing intersect?

Later today I'm on a panel at the Social Media Club in Salt Lake City (#smcslc) discussing how marketing and social media work together. While mostly a Q&A session I need to prepare a 4 minute set of opening remarks. So what better way than to use social media do distribute the ideas?

To illustrate how social media might work, the content consists of 50 short statements of less than 140 characters. This makes them perfect for tweets. They are meant to spark conversation and debate. Starting with a broad definition of marketing the story line weaves through social media, how to participate, and what you need to address as a brand.

UPDATE: Link broken; will fix. Email me if you want a copy. Here's a link to download a PDF of the full list.

UPDATE: Newsroom was temporary, but had 600+ visitors. Also, it can be found on social media newsroom created for it.

Enjoy, discuss and share - let me know at @apowerpoint.

The list:

1. Marketing aligns solutions and needs to everyone’s benefit.

2. While advertising gets the $250 billion budget, it is not marketing’s Job 1.

3. CMO Job 1: Create products in tune with consumer changing wants and needs; listen and extrapolate

4. CMO Job 2: Communicate that there is a solution to an audience’s unmet need.

5. Brands should solve problems; products should be sold.

6. To survive as a brand you must add value; what better way than through direct interaction with people?

7. Social media must reflect value proposition, positioning, and brand essence – simultaneously – just like advertising.

8. Social Media leverages human interaction as the vehicle for passing a message. Create a Social Media Briefing book.

9. Smoke signals, jungle drums, rotary dial phones, and email were all ‘social media’.

10. Crowdsourcing and brand hijacking are common in social media.

11. Media fragmentation and category divergence result in overload and hyper-choice – so we ask somebody else.

12. Two-thirds of the economy is driven by personal recommendations: McKinsey (they also said we only needed 900k cell phones)

13. People trust people more than entities; but there can be false prophets, pied pipers and spammers. (Edelman and Nielsen).

14. Know thyself and thy audience – be simpatico re the use of social media.

15. A simple change in prepositions impacts an organization to its core: when “to” becomes “with”.

16. Success with social media is not easy, cheap, fast or even guaranteed.

17. There are two knobs on the ‘influence’ etch-a-sketch: trust and relevance, each with their own impact.

18. Learn the difference between passive, conversational and active listening. Listen before you jump.

19. People usually don’t talk about brands first; they talk about their problems in their terms.

20. Follow first, ask second, and contribute third. Earn respect.

21. Regarding messaging, you must be honest and transparent in social media. Stop the spin you are dealing with equals.

22. Social media will evolve into marketing, journalistic, and personal segments.

23. Learn the Scoble starfish: there are 100s of tools, but only a few categories. Know their strengths and weaknesses.

24. Social media tools may become the new CRM platform; they certainly will be integrated.

25. People use social media their way: washing machines are on twitter; dogs have fans.

26. Common interests are the new demographics; approach a common ground: 17 year old girls and 70 year old men ski.

27. While Google never forgets, some topics have the half-life of a mayfly others are a bit more permanent.

28. Social media requires patience in terms of both group acceptance and impact.

29. Building a brand’s reputation takes work – just like building awareness.

30. Brand monitoring is an insurance policy.

31. Participation in social media without a business objective is a recipe for failure.

32. Participation without a strategy may be worse than not having an objective.

33. Buzz is fickle, fleeting, factual and fictitious – figuring out what is what can be frustrating.

34. Get SM wrong and it spreads like wildfire in the tree tops; only rarely does it destroy the roots. People forgive.

35. Get customer service wrong and it travels even faster with possible life-threatening injuries to a brand.

36. Guidelines required – the professional/personal line may be fuzzy, but there are legal issues.

37. Your opinion matters; it can be sued. Yelp!

38. Distribution of content is more important than posting of content; stop before you build another site.

39. If we're marketing 'with' instead of 'to' consumers, we need to be 'developing with' instead of 'pitching to' journalists.

40. Social media newsrooms have lots of uses. This list is on one.

41. We’re moving away from links of destinations to a destination free Web where information flows.

42. Content is consumed very differently on the web – multi-tasking, scanning, multi-media required.

43. We decide emotionally, we defend rationally. Social media needs to be augmented with facts.

44. Social media can help conversion as much, if not more than, lead generation.

45. By definition B2B sales are a natural community – ripe for social media and the Social Media Proposal.

46. Build your business in the long tail where the market is fragmented and interesting.

47. Social networks have different sweet spots and audiences; know the options via a social network footprint.

48. Social media and advertising have yet to find the emulsifier that allows them to mix together.

49. Advertising on social networks is a clash of pronouns: 1st person (My…) vs. 2nd person (hey you…)

50. Marketers can do 5 things to SPARK a conversation: stimulate, participate, amplify, repair or kindle.

51. BONUS: Social media is uncharted territory for a myriad of reasons: Have fun.


Repeat:
UPDATE: broken links, email for copy.

3 comments:

Pete Codella said...

Well done, Anthony. And thank you for your insightful comments on the panel. Your strategic marketing approach provided a needed perspective. Congrats!

Anonymous said...

Your article was very interesting and insightful. Could not agree with you more.
Thanks!

Unknown said...

Great job. The link to the pdf does not work.

amy@amychorew.com