Social Media Marketing

Hey Everyone!

I am looking for some insight into the Social Media Marketing world. Does anyone have any expertise in this area and would allow me to "pick their brain" or if someone has any articles, books, or seminar recommendations that would be helpful, would you send them my way?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by the girl Riot on April 7, 2008 at 11:37am

I mean, basically, that some people (agencies) "have it" and some "don't."
As in high school, when you had the cool kids, and the poseurs (or whatever lingo your high school used--we had poseurs) who tried to mimic the cool kids and fell short, usually catastrophically, and launching them into the land of the utterly uncool.

I'm saying that most of these sm plans are poseurs--they try too hard and don't really get it, instead alienating rather than inviting. (Ie--Coca Cola's multitude of outsourced agencies versus, for example, Deep Focus... while Strawberry Frog lands somewhere in the middle).

On another note, the idea of Prom King brands somewhat reflects this mentality for brands rather than agencies, and the short post might be a good read for anyone studying "it" brands: tangerinetoad, courtesy of AgencySpy.

Permalink Reply by Jessica on May 15, 2008 at 9:56pm

I've noticed this kind of marketing! Pepsi, nintendo and vespa, have all tried to appear 'down with it' with the street-culture crowd. They've been putting up street art; posting or stenciling the way artists do but it is soooooo lame and totally contradicts the anti-establishment mindset that this scene is associated with!

Permalink Reply by Melinda Caughill on May 21, 2008 at 5:21pm

I"m not sure if you even care about this thread any more... but I'm very much interested in this medium right now. I can't digest enough.
I'm in love with the book "GROUNDSWELL"... It's a bit biased to big companies, which is not very helpful to me (most of my clients are less than 500 employees with a couple of exceptions). And, I am hoping to find ways to develop affordable off-shoots to their web sites using social media... without being spammy - and the book isn't very helpful for that.
But overall it's a very insightful read.
Anyone else wanna chat about what you're doing with social media? I'm very, very interested in how marketing people use it... outside of the "I have a $500,000 budget for this" world.
TY!

Permalink Reply by Marc Girolimetti on May 22, 2008 at 12:17pm

Melinda,

If you're looking for books check out Larry Webber's "Marketing to the Social Web". It's a pretty good read and would open the eyes of some of your clients. Personally, we've been trying to avoid social media as a term, because it kind of falls into the "shortsighted fad tools" category and you end up with clients saying "Well we tried this social media campaign" and then they run right back to their comfort zone. That is what clients so desperately need to avoid. Facebook, MySpace and Second Life are smattered with one-off campaigns that never got traction. What has to change is the clients need to culturally get behind the brand being social. Brands, historically, have been shy and protective of their image. Being social and putting yourself out there exposes the brand, warts and all, but typically brings with it a "you're one of us" response from the consumer. Plus it's more fun and opens them up to various creativity that they never would have considered prior to the culture shift.

Permalink Reply by Dave Madrid on June 4, 2008 at 9:52am

Go to Ad-age white papers and down load there copy its great

Permalink Reply by Adirondack on June 27, 2008 at 2:22pm

This is a great forum - I struggle with the use of social media for marketing and SEO purposes...it often seems like the results aren't worth the time invested. Looking forward to hearing more on this topic - thanks!

Permalink Reply by Vicky Tamaru on December 22, 2008 at 8:06pm

We just soft-launched two games on Facebook for MSN Games: Hexic and Chess. The Hexic game is already clocking in at almost 7,000 monthly users just via Facebook alerts and friends challenging each other's high scores--there have been no advertising or marketing campaigns as of yet. We also added a badge system to encourage people to keep coming back.

We'll be sharing some technical learnings with Facebook and other Social Networking sites on our development blog: http://www.plexipixel.com/linefeed.

Permalink Reply by Michael Fanning on December 28, 2008 at 12:03am

Hello Wendi:

We have a new, real world application in social network marketing that you, and this group, can check out first hand, and since we just launched last week (12/19/08) you won't read about it in any books. It's called BurningFan and allow members to select the companies they want to support on their individual pages, versus ad messages that are a part of your page, but not a part of your voice.

You can load the app from AdGabber or any Ning community ... from your My Page use Add Applications ... the BurningFan app is in the Most Popular, Fun and Main categories. Once loaded there is a Top 5, and Top 50 most popular list of Liked, and DisLiked to check out as well.

All the best, and let me (us) know what you think.

Michael

Permalink Reply by dubya on January 29, 2009 at 1:25am

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

Permalink Reply by Vince Jelenic on June 22, 2009 at 12:42am

Ok, I'll go out on a limb here.

disclosure: I am not an ad professional, and not a marketing expert.
the site I will mention is run by our own company, Green Spot Antiques.

To be succint, as a small retailer, in the antiques business, we draw the following equation.
social media Marketing = Trust & service.

Utilizing a more open social media allows us to interact with clientele in a mannet not possible years ago. Interaction aimed at servicing their needs, wishes, and questions. Ours is a two-edged reach, local customers (within about 200 km for larger items that are difficult to ship), and world-wide for shippable items.

By leveraging our website (traffic generation SEO towards social and selling sites), Ebay and selling venues (indicators of trust factor/history of selling online), together with implementation of open and social group for Antiques Salvagers -Shabby chic as a discussion base for a small like-minded community, we have now moved into the final phases of our plan: A social network presenting a single company to service the needs and wishes of our clientele.

It is still a bit experimental, but already profitable. I believe it contains many elements which can apply to larger companies, but I also believe that the opportunity for smaller social networks which are small-business centric is a huge opportunity. With the cost of print, and other media, the cost savings are huge. In fact our own experiments have cost us time and effort, but $00 so far. The recompense has been in the thousands, and very quickly (three months since started), and growing quickly.

Needless to say, we work social media to our advantage, and would never go back to simple blogs or one-way publishing.

Sad fact is, it will take at least a year for the social media service network to be really active, simply because many of the users are facing a new paradigm and technology. But they will learn fast.

Like any network, it has lurkers. But since it is targeted at a very specific target (sales or service), AND the membership has already been pre-approved (self joining), we expect that at some point during the year a lurker becomes active as their needs arise.

Do have a look at http://greenspot.ning.com, what we consider among the first Shop-Ning social selling platforms built on the items mentioned above. We really look forwards to comments/suggestions. Like I said, still somewhat experimental.

cheers
Vince
Green Spot LIVE SHOPPING-Ning
Green Spot Antiques
Antiques Recyclers-Salvage Chic

CAMBRIDGE, Ontario, Canada 43° 26' N 80° 30' W
Go to our twitter page and get the day's secret word, it's worth a big SAVING. Follow us on twitter for Tweet deals and latest quick update
Follow our quirky Green INK blog at http://greeninkdiary.blogspot.com/

Permalink Reply by Vince Jelenic on June 22, 2009 at 4:13pm

As a quick aside, when I said

"Like any network, it has lurkers. But since it is targeted at a very specific target (sales or service), AND the membership has already been pre-approved (self joining), we expect that at some point during the year a lurker becomes active as their needs arise."

This is exactly the result today, a member who signed on back in April of this year, has only now joined the "preview" group -- a group made up of comments with pictures of our newest arrivals. Retention and long-term engagement, at the user's discretion, of course.
This case in point is our target result.

Cheer.
Vince.

Permalink Reply by Roxanne Darling on June 22, 2009 at 11:10pm

Great notes Vince and I will be mentioning you in my social media classes. As often as not, "regular" people seem to get it more easily, in that when you share vs sell, you also end up selling - if you have the patience. And the people who buy, are much more likely to become true fans, as compared to one offs responding to a gimmick in the sales process.

Roxanne Darling
I'm on Twitter (since April '07)
I teach classes at KnowHow Cafe (Join our list and use promo code "rox")
Partner at Bare Feet Studios
Founder of the Hawaii Chapter of the Social Media Club