HFTB Marketing Blog

One of the true eternal questions of social media marketing – How do I convince my boss it’s worth the effort (read-in, “measurable financially”)?

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The folks at Hubspot and Chris Brogan got together this week to present some ideas on just that subject.  And while the answers to the above question where about as grainy as the webinar audio feed, Brogan did a great job of at least framing the subject.  He discusses the landscape of tools that are currently out there and some possibilities for business use of each.

Metrics for actual Return on Investment of social media marketing are conspicuous in their absence.  Which leads to the tried and true marketers axiom that the same can be said about definitive ROI for most marketing tactics.

Uhh,.. not sure where that leaves us exactly, but let’s press forward anyhow.

So what did I take from the presentation?

First, as noted above, Brogan references many great tools marketers can use for social media campaigns.  In my opinion, this alone is worth the price of admission… which is,  free… by the way.

But regardless, I’d recommend the webinar for this purpose alone.

Secondly, social media marketing is happening.  Instead of wringing your hands about metrics, the arguments to simply start participating are strong.  “Start participating” here is important because, to paraphrase Brogan, the conversations about your company are already taking place.  You can either choose to be an active part of those conversations – or not.

What is often missed by companies reticent to dive into social media marketing is that there is a wealth of consumer information about their products or services at their fingertips on a daily basis… and it’s relatively inexpensive (not free by any means, but all in all, inexpensive).

Many companies, including former and current clients of mine, spend large sums gathering this data by other means.  But when confronted with the idea of starting a blog, putting out an enewsletter or becoming a part of a social community, typically balk at the ideas because they are unsure of the payback.  Well, how about a decreased focus group budget to start with?

Take a look at the webinar and Brogan’s slide presentation here.  Brogan is well worth your time simply for his ideas on social media strategy and utilizing the tools that are out there to execute it.

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Social Media, Web Design blogging, new media strategy, Social Media, social media marketing

photo by jswieringa

Seth Godin had an interesting post on how new media, particularly blogging, is allowing the relative increase in leverage for individuals (the small), while larger companies, or brands (the large), are losing relative leverage.  Leverage in this case, is attention to, or eyeballs on, a company’s marketing efforts.

His point is that more traditional marketing tactics in most cases have a significant barrier to entry – a budget.  In other words, you needed cash to play in the big leagues.

With new marketing, or blogging in this case, this barrier has been largely removed.  And as a result, individuals have been empowered to get their message out, whatever that may be, brand related or otherwise.

He makes the case that this has made it relatively more difficult for big brands to garner eyeballs in the online arena.

Maybe. But I would add that while there certainly has been an increase in leverage for individuals, it doesn’t necessarily have to be at the expense of larger companies.

A great example of this is Scott Monty and Ford.  Take a look at his Social Media Marketing blog and you’ll see what I mean.  Ford, in recognition of Godin’s point, has Scott heading up their Social Media efforts.  In other words, they’ve found a way for the power of the individual in the blogosphere to create value for their (large) company.  And guess what – I’d be willing to bet there is a fairly significant budget behind it.

Individuals can, and often do have greater clout than companies when it comes to blogging and social media.  This is one of the aspects of new marketing that sets it apart from many of the traditional tactics that Godin mentions are inherently budget driven and therefore skewed towards larger companies. But using the power of the individual, as long as the integrity of that bloggers posts is maintained through honest and frank relatively unfiltered content, can be a powerful tool that large companies can incorporate into their new media strategy.

As blogging becomes more of a business (and yes, don’t kid yourself, it is), corporations that understand the nature of what is valued online and have the budgets to allow a Scott Monty to head up their efforts, can turn the trend of small competing with large to their advantage.

This is not to say that blogging will ever resemble television advertising with expensive budget barriers.  But as thought leaders such as David Meerman Scott, Brian Clark and Seth Godin get their new marketing messages through, and large companies begin to incorporate those strategies more and more into their marketing efforts, small may not be the new large anymore.

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New Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized blogging, marketing efforts, new media, new media strategy, Social Media, traditional marketing tactics