We had an excellent seminar this morning at Brandswag. The seminar was over the concepts of integrating social media into your overall marketing strategy. It is extremely important that every business drive social media through traditional marketing practices…. and vice-versa.
Below you will find my Powerpoint presentation from the seminar.
I wanted to break down 10 ways to integrate social media into your traditional marketing practices. The following tips are simple reminders that the world is changing and it is extremely important to shift with the edge.
1. Remember that customers are people first and buyers second
It is important to keep in mind that your customers are not only a demographic and a wallet… but an individual. If you start to incorporate the thinking of “individualistic marketing” your focus will be extremely… targeted.
2. People thrive on conversation and deals
A study recently released by Razorfish states that of “those that follow a brand on Twitter, 44% say that access to deals is the main reason. The same holds true for those that added a brand on Facebook or Myspace, where 37% cite access to exclusive deals or offers as their main reason.” (pg 9)
There will always be a place for conversation and deals. Integrate your direct mail and coupon deals into your social media marketing.
3. Integration is extremely important because of speed and portability
Mobile technology is revolutionizing the way the world communicates. Social media will hit mass appeal because of the mobile phone and the pda. Thousands of text messages are sent on a daily basis… even an hourly basis… It is rumored that 4.5 billion cell phones will be on the market by the end of 2010. China has a mobile provider with 500 million cell phone users. We are going to be mobile… portable.. and fast.
4. We are shifting from uni-directional and bi-directional communication to multi-directional. (slide 16)
5. Listening and monitoring your brand online
This is one of the more important things you can do before integrating social media into your marketing strategy. Use Google Alerts or Radian 6 to monitor your brand and understand the positive and negative influence the Internet is having on your company and clients.
6. Objective and Strategy need to be developed before using social media
Would you do anything in your business before planning out the ramifications of your actions? The same applies to social media. Now… if you would rather just throw ideas around without aiming… or acting… You are going to have a bigger problem than applying social media to your business. Ask yourself why you are going to be applying social media? Is it going to be for reputation management, brand awareness, or lead generation?
7. Add your social media profile links to your email signature
Do I really have to explain that? 
Need an incentive? Check out the way Hotmail grew by leaps and bounds using the footer in email.
8. Plan the use of social media within your company
Who should be using the company profile? Who should be adding content on a daily basis. It is extremely important to build out an internal social media policy. This should probably be one of the first things you deal with before entering a social media campaign.
9. Remember to build a content portal before pushing information through the Twitter-Face-Linked-verse.
It is extremely important to build out a hub for your content. You need to be driving people (users) from different sites to a central location. Why? It is easier to capture information and sell.
10. Don’t stress. Have fun.
Social media is not something to absolutely flip out about… it is important to understand and time will tell on the “importance” of the tools being created on the Internet. Remember to keep up-to-date and look for ways where social media can help strengthen your traditional communication strategy.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=7a0ee8b7-3f73-4ed8-8b18-387c26ed8eff)
Kyle, I like this presentation as it helps lay out the tactical case (at leas) for skeptics. One question about point 2: You have numbers to back up the fact that people want deals, but nothing to back up the contention that people want conversation. I think that's an important piece, and I'm looking for it.
Thanks for the comment Doug. I am searching right now for some data. I will definitely shoot something over to you if I find something! I found the deals portion of the research study interesting because the "deals" actually lead to a sale.
Thanks Kyle– the deals to sale aspect is very compelling. I was just jumping in the shoes of the social media advocate inside the company, who wants to simultaneously prove value and make sure the conversational roots remain in the social media– thus the hunger for data on holding up that end.
Kyle, really dig this presentation. To Doug's point above, I think we'll see more data when more companies actually start *tracking* and measuring the conversations. We've always treated dialogue as ancillary, and now that we can trace digital breadcrumbs for at least the online part of those conversations, I think we'll get closer to drawing solid lines between non-transactional interactions and sales.
Cheers,
Amber Naslund
Director of Community, Radian6
@ambercadabra
[...] Continued here: 10 Tips to Integrating Social Media with Marketing | Kyle Lacy … [...]
[...] 10 Tips to Integrating Social Media with Marketing (kylelacy.com) [...]
[...] 10 Tips to Integrating Social Media with Marketing (kylelacy.com) [...]
These effective notes are good to remember and to follow for the marketing executives to have successful marketing through the medium of social networking.I think the social networking is become a major part of marketing strategies for most of companies.
Great blog and power point Kyle! Thank you for sharing.
[...] 10 Tips to Integrating Social Media with Marketing (kylelacy.com) [...]
[...] 10 Tips to Integrating Social Media with Marketing | Kyle Lacy … I wanted to break down 10 ways to integrate social media into your traditional marketing practices. The following tips are simple reminders that the world is changing and it is extremely important to shift with the edge. [...]
[...] 10 Tips to Integrating Social Media with Marketing | Kyle Lacy … [...]
[...] 10 Tips to Integrating Social Media with Marketing | Kyle Lacy … [...]
[...] finding that so much of our success with traditional media outreach plays into the success of a social media campaign, and vice versa. And you don’t need expensive tools anymore. Today, you can’t afford not to [...]