5/5/2009
Twitter, Social Media, and the New Marketing Mix
At the recent SOBCon Biz School for Bloggers event, we were treated to a discussion of Twitter led by the all star panel of Zena Weist, Lucretia Pruitt, Chris Garrett, and Jason Falls.
Much of what they had to say – and the tone of SOBCon on the whole – demonstrates how much the online marketing model has changed in a mere couple of years. Companies need to take note of the changes if they are to craft sensible and effective marketing programs.
The “Old” Online Marketing Model
In the old days of 2005, you could break down online marketing into two pieces -
- Paid Search Marketing
- Organic Search Marketing
Smart firms did both – buying pay per click and other types of ads where it made sense, optimizing their sites for the search engines using a host of techniques.
The New Online Marketing Model
Now we have three pieces of the online marketing pie -
- Paid Search Marketing
- Organic Search Marketing
- Social Media Engagement
I hesitate to use the phrase “social media marketing”, because as Lucretia Pruitt and the other panelists pointed out, social media is not b2b or b2c, it’s p2p – people to people. The tactic of marketing, especially the aggressive, in-your-face variety, runs contrary to the spirit of social media and is likely to backfire. I prefer the word “engagement”, because the aim of social media is to connect on a personal level with customers. This connective dimension is what makes social media such a powerful engine for driving business and customer loyalty.
Adding Social Media to the b2b and b2c Marketing Mix
Is Twitter the nexus of the social media universe? Since you can’t open a newspaper or turn on the TV without hearing reference to the Twitosphere, one might easily think so. It was instructive to note that none of the panelists viewed Twitter as the be-all, end-all of business marketing.
Twitter is a powerful tool, but only one among many. Different business models require different mixtures of social media engagement. The panel was rather divided on Twitter’s marketing value. Jason Falls sees Twitter as a massive cocktail party, a purely social network, a diversion and not a place to conduct business at all. Chris Garrett sees Twitter as marketing in a broader sense, as a way to obtain market intelligence. Lucretia Pruitt emphasized Twitter’s value as a tool for sustaining relationships.
So how does a business get started with social media engagement. Zena Weist provided the answer – Determine how your customers want to communicate with you. Are your customers on Twitter, FaceBook, or LinkedIn? Are they blog readers, blog writers, or StumbleUpon-ers? Are they nowhere … or everywhere?
Once you get a handle on where your market lives online, developing a social media presence is all downhill. In this respect social media engagement is no different from any other form of marketing. Greenpeace wouldn’t send direct mail solicitations to the NRA membership list. Arch Coal, Inc. doesn’t buy banner ads on TreeHugger.com. Marketing is always about locating potential customers and talking to them. The nice thing about social media is, customers can talk back.
How do you find out where your customers are in the social media universe? We’ll take that up in a future post.
