MarketUP: Marketing & PR Services

How many social networks do you engage in on a regular basis - and is the time spent worth it? This is a frequent topic of conversation that I've seen crop up on - guess what - all those social networks! And the answer may be different for you as a business versus as an individual. If you are an agency, as we are, representing both your own business and your clients' - you can multiply your social involvement by an X factor and imagine then how much time commitment is involved.

Evolution

More than a decade ago we started with the corporate website as online presence - and it was pretty much one-way content posting, maybe with an email newsletter sign up form and a few questions submitted. Blogs became a more popular form of individual expression, and were then appended to business websites - or replaced them if you were smaller - and responding to Comments was added to the mix.

Enter in rather quick succession the real-time networks: MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube - and many others (some defunct). Posting and responding to content exploded. The time commitment increased exponentially. Then we had to tie  each network to the other - to cover all the bases. LinkedIn jumped on the bandwagon - add another connection. Social sharing/rating increased: Blogger, digg, del.icio.us, Wikipedia, reddit, Posterous, and more. And don't forget - not in historical or hierarchical order - Flickr, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, FourSquare, GoWalla, Klout, Blip.fm, last.fm, Orkut, bebo, Google Buzz, Google Reader, Google+, SlideShare, Instagram, just-out-of-the-gate Pinterest... The latest count on the Share bar widget is over 330! I'm certain to have missed your personal favorite. Amplify this by mobile check-ins and gamification apps like EmpireAvenue (!) or the Zynga lineup - and who has time for anything else???

Opportunity?

Recent GetBusy Media blog post by Ryan McBurney repeats the idea that the next big business opportunity will be 'Social Assistance'. He in turn quotes Mashable's Nova Spivack's excellent post on 'Sharepocalypse', a catchy headline to be sure...that forecasts a whole new category of Social Assistance that includes SRM, curation, awareness, personalization, automation, and analytics (of course).

But what's the ROI? The ever-asked question by my clients and undoubtably yours.

The point to all of this busy-ness, connecting and sharing - from a business standpoint - is multifold: brand awareness, current and prospective customer engagement, and business development, all resulting in sales. The belief that larger numbers of followers, fans, likes or comments = greater revenue is one of the yet-to-be-realized dreams for most companies. But it doesn't mean we should give up all activity. It means we are still trying to figure out the right formula, depending on your particular goals, strategy and what you are selling.

Monetizing

Another yet-to-materialize theory is Social Media advertising results. We have experimented with Facebook ads - and while they have indeed yielded more 'Likes', that alone has not translated into more paying clients. Nor much meaningful additional engagement. Like all marketing strategies - it takes time to build trust and commitment. The Center for Media Research reports a study from the Pivot Conference this past Spring showing that with all the online activity, we have become really good at ignoring the stuff we don't care about - like ads. They call this 'banner blindness'. To quote, "Usability guru Jakob Nielsen demonstrated through heat maps where eyes are focused on a website screen. Consumer attention is shown to zero in on text and not the banners around it."

So what to do? Rethink paid media. Get creative. If creating a custom Zynga game hits your demographic - maybe that's the way to go. Realize however that we are all competing for eyeballs and TIME.

Just barely squeezing in time to write a blog post about this topic indicates that I might be on the 'overload' side of the equation - but it also could mean that I need to hire more people! If only the measurement of outcome and profitability were simpler.

Disclaimer: Lest you think this post was one giant self-promotion bit, because the many links go to my own profiles, they were linked as examples rather than just a generic 'welcome' page for each service. And they are not stellar examples in most cases - because I neglect many of them! Feel free to add your own sites/links in Comments - and I'll go check them out, like them, comment, etc. - as I have time. :)

Photo attribution: Ludwig Gatzke's photostream, Flickr, Creative Commons license

I'm going to stop apologizing. While I had every intention of being more self-disciplined about my own Blog contributions - life, and clients, just keep jumping in front of my intentions.

Now a couple months have again passed since the last post, and it seems impossible to me that May 26th turned into August 7th - but there's the reality. Family, friends and co-workers can attest to the more-than-usual hectic schedule plus a couple of unforeseen events that contributed to this time lapse. But in the end it is about me and my choices: where do I choose to focus my energy every day? The answer is clearly, "On client deliverables".

I'm lucky that client work is above normal for this time of year and I'm even luckier to be working with the calibre of clients we have! In fact, we are so swamped that I've finally been able to realize a long-hoped for collaboration with @KnealeMann; albeit a tiny one to start, but which I fully anticipate will grow and flourish. Having conversations with Kneale is like getting an injection of Red Bull intravenously. He's FULL of ideas and creative solutions to business challenges! I need to drink a full pot of coffee before picking up the phone to speak with him. (Peace, Kneale - you're great).

In the midst of all this controlled mayhem I did make the choice to escape for a much-needed vacation with my equally-driven husband to a beautiful Caribbean island. Great decision! Best recharging trip ever - I highly reommend this kind of action to everyone.

So here I sit on a Sunday (late) morning...still drinking part of that pot of coffee...and feel the writing bug hit me. Yes, I do in fact have some "client work" that needs to get finished, and I will be doing that a little later. But for the moment it's peaceful, I can think, I can share, and I'm moitivated enough to do so.

Not that I don't secretly wish I was still sitting on a beach terrace on an island...no apologies.

--Donna

{EAV_BLOG_VER:f453c0ed6e636006} 

Interesting text string, no? I've been asked by Empire Avenue to place this in the first part of my blog post - so they can verify that my blog is written by a real person. Hmmm. I guess a bunch of robots are writing blogs that I have not yet uncovered.

I admit: I got sucked into this newish gamified social network...and I'm not the only one! Just got home from Blog World (#BWENY) and heard @chrispirillo confess that he is addicted to the site. His 'value' is certainly one indication of his high level of participation.

The topic of 'Game Mechanics: The Future of Loyalty' was discussed yesterday at the conference by @schneidermike, Chris, Dave Tyler, and @JasonKeath - as applied to business promotion.

Fun. The panel was - and the insistance by the speakers that 'fun' was an important component of any form of gamification. I agree. Other points mentioned:

• 'Earn and redeem' drives behaviour
• 'Step' people along a path of learning the game
• Make it contextually relevant

There was much more - and it continued into the keynote panel at the end fo the day. In the end, if you are going to develop a gamified promotion for business - you still need to measure the success through increase in sales. Agree with that as well.