Established companies are turning to online social sites to build brand communities and boost sales. This past year, companies have transformed these networking sites into a means for marketing and advertising to potential consumers. Recently Starbucks and Pizza Hut have proven to be top competitors in the social media marketing world.

Starbucks is now the top brand on Facebook. They have surpassed Coca-Cola in popularity, acquiring over 3.6 million followers on their fan page. They contribute their success to an aggressive social media marketing strategy and the construction of an online coffee community where Starbucks’ coworkers and customers can exchange stories and company ideas, connecting Starbucks fans worldwide. In addition they are using the social site to promote new products including the Via instant coffee. Last month Starbucks offered their Facebook followers a free cup of coffee for taking the Via instant coffee taste test at local stores.

Pizza Hut is also expanding their company with the help of iPhones. After downloading the Pizza Hut application, users are able to create and customize their pizza using the iPhone’s touch screen features. Similar to Starbucks’ strategy, Pizza Hut hopes customers will enjoy the interactive ordering experience, connect with the brand, and become loyal customers.

This demo video on the new iPhone application demonstrates how Pizza Hut is revamping the pizza industry.

The future for these social sites and devices is uncertain. Will they sustain popularity with users as more businesses utilize them for marketing purposes or will this just be another technology trend that will be replaced by something bigger and better?

On August 27, 2009, Hilton Graham, Director of Digital Strategy with Hanes Brands, Inc, and Adam Keats, Senior Vice President at Weber Shandwick, discussed how Hanes is using social media to build better relationships with its customers.

What Is Social Media?

Social media is an umbrella term for the tools and technology people use to interact with content. It is the mechanism by which brand marketing has evolved from a monologue (one-to-one communication from advertiser to consumer) to a seriously super-charged dialogue in which many people can publish their message about a brand to many others.

Social media content is characterized as:

• Easy to interact with
• Easy to share
• Capable of generating realtime feedback
• Not being constrained by time and space

Social media has democratized brand messaging. Hanes was ready to join the conversation. Here is how they did it.

Hanes and Social Media: Tiptoeing into the Fray

Hanes’ overall strategy is to using social media tools to start a dialogue with their customers. They plan to accomplish this by:

• Developing a blogger network (the Hanes Comfort Crew)
• Tapping into their customers’ passion points (Passionately Pink for the Cure, Disney Celebrate in Comfort campaigns)
• Going where their customers are (Twitter, Facebook, real-world events such as the BlogHer conference)

I found it notable that several times during the presentation Graham described Hanes’ strategy as “tiptoeing.” To me this indicated a level of seriousness and humility that companies need if they are to survive and thrive in social spaces on the Web. Hanes is entering the social networking realm with a plan that prioritizes its customers’ needs and does not attempt to define or dominate the conversations that it starts with them.

The Hanes Comfort Crew

The Hanes Comfort Crew is a group of bloggers who broadly represent Hanes’ customer base: moms and dads, fashion and lifestyle mavens. These bloggers are not paid to write about Hanes. They were selected because they already had an affinity for the brand and had followings who were likely to share or be receptive to that affinity. Hanes gives these bloggers opportunities and ideas to talk about the Hanes brand in an authentic way. For instance, Hanes held its Comfort Crew kickoff by inviting the bloggers and their families to Disney World, where they discussed the products, tested out how the Hanes “wedgie-free panties” held up against a day of roller coaster rides, and created a lot of fun memories worth blogging home about.

Hanes also attended the BlogHer conference for women bloggers, where they built up even more buzz with their conversation-sparking T-shirt swag bags, footrubs at their Hanes Comfort Social, and expansion of the Comfort Crew (the original crew members each were invited to find 3–4 recruits from the conference attendees).

Hanes Got Crafty at the BlogHer Conference With These Cool T-shirt Totes

How Hanes Measures Success

Hanes takes a methodical approach to social media marketing, carefully crafting its message, setting goals, and measuring successes, just as it has always done with its traditional marketing tactics.

• They determined benchmarks for success in both traditional and social media.
• They looked at current brand conversations in both traditional and social media (e.g., number of blog posts about Hanes, number of tweets, print and TV ad circulation, etc.).
• They set goals to increase levels of conversation by 10% in both traditional and social media.
• They continued tracking and reporting monthly performance in each category.

2 Must-Do’s for Your Company

Graham and Keats left us with two cardinal rules for interacting with our customers in the social media realm:

1. When someone praises your brand, say Thank You.
2. If you make a mistake, apologize (quickly).

Other Takeaways

• Create real conversations by having interesting things to talk about and giving people things and experiences that they value. Hanes has a lot going on! They’re partnering with companies and celebrities we love to offer experiences worth talking about and participating in. I Googled Hanes and came up a T-shirt design competition to benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure®, a Disney World vacation giveaway, a Michael Jordan celebrity invitational golf trip giveaway, an invitation to share your most embarrassing wedgie story (for a prize, of course!), dozens of news stories and videos, and reams of blog discussions.
• Don’t restrict your “social media marketing” to virtual venues. Go where your customers are in the real world, too.
• Create goals and success criteria for your social media marketing campaigns. Be methodical. Measure your results.
• Don’t say you’re great. Just be great. Social media gives people a way to spread their approval further and faster than ever before. Many thanks to Graham and Keats for showing how well Hanes has learned this lesson.

On May 21, 2009, marketers from all over Austin converged on the Hilton for the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) where the Austin AMA and the OMS jointly hosted the luncheon as a part of the Power Lunch Series. The speaker was Paula Berg, who shared her successes and failures in Social Media for Southwest Airlines.

Through my recent adventures into Social Media I have found chests full of theory and only a few hidden nuggets of practical usable knowledge. At least that was the case until Paula Berg took the stage last week at the Austin AMA - OMS luncheon. As our barbecue lunch began to settle, Paula walked us through her ups and downs in Social Media for Southwest Airlines. Like most companies, Southwest started their foray into Social Media with a blog, but Paul and her team have since utilized everything from Twitter to YouTube.

Southwest Airlines Emerging Media Presentation

I’m sure that Paula didn’t have a top ten list in mind while she was presenting, but in the spirit of Social Media here are the 10 things Paul taught us about Social Media:

1. It can help you reach a new demographic. The Nuts About Southwest blog started as a replacement for A&E’s Airline. The show allowed Southwest to reach a different demographic by giving customers an inside look at their culture. All you need to know is who you want to target and where they hang out.
2. It’s OK to not have a strategy as long as you have a strategy?!? Paula mentioned she didn’t have a strategy when they started the blog, but I think she was just being modest. The strategy, or maybe we should call it a goal, was to give customers an inside look at Southwest. What they didn’t anticipate was all the things the blog would become. Social Media is so new, don’t try and put too narrow a scope on your strategy. It’s very much like a box of chocolates…
3. It’s good to have a presence in Social Media before you have a crisis. Blogs in response to bad press are not seen as authentic. You need to create conversations using Social Media before it’s too late.
4. Immediate, passionate feedback exists at no cost. Southwest was able to avoid using too much ink when customers print boarding passes, and discovered the real reason people don’t like their open seating policy. Paula has been able to create an open relationship with customers where they offer feedback because they know they will be heard.
5. You need thick skin. Criticism, warranted or not, hurts. The lesson is to be prepared to take the good with the bad.
6. When the media won’t listen, take your message directly to the people. Paula and her team “fought fire with fire” when responding to a couple of young ladies claiming they were treated unfairly because of their good looks. Since the media was only interested in one side of the story, Southwest created a video response that went viral. The only videos viewed more that week were of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
7. Listen. Some of the most valuable information Paula received was from listening to what people where saying- especially on Twitter. Southwest first discovered their “rapping flight attendant” through a twitter post. It’s amazing to think you might learn something about your own company reading your Twitter feed!
8. Never stop the conversation. When people comment on your blog posts, respond. This goes right along with listening. Social Media is a two way street. Don’t ignore people when they talk to you.
9. Social Media causes sleeplessness. Someone asked Paula what the ROI is for Southwest’s Social Media efforts. From Southwest’s point of view, it is huge. The only cost for them was paying Paula, and, over the past three years, she has worked many hours of free overtime. Social Media never sleeps, and neither does Paula. If you decide to immerse yourself this world, be ready with a case of red bull and a trusty mobile device.
10. Southwest will be flying to Hawaii and Mexico in the near future. Paula was kind enough to slip us this insider information after her presentation. This doesn’t really have any Social Media implications, but twitter probably works better on the beach.

- Josh

On May 12, 2009, hundreds of Austin marketing professionals gathered for Marketing Jam ‘09 hosted by The Austin chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA). Marketer, Blogger and AMA Member, Darren Drewitz gives a recap of all the activities.

“I wanna rock-n-roll all night and practice marketing every day.” With apologies to the legendary rock band KISS, this was the adopted slogan for Marketing Jam 09. The Austin chapter of the American Marketing Association hosted a hybrid night of marketing best practices, networking and live music at the always hip Cool River Café in North Austin. With the VP of Programs Elect Simon Salt emceeing the way, AMA members were treated to a fun and informative meeting featuring some of today’s top marketing acts.

Simon introduces the speakers

The “opening band” was Pierpont Communications and the AMA groupies were treated to a duet presentation from Senior VP, Michael Russell and VP, Stacy Armijo. Michael’s set list included a situational overview of today’s business climate in a down economy and how to do more with less when achieving marketing success and new business. The “must haves” in today’s marketing world as sung by Michael are strategy, targets, messaging and differentiation. “Times are tough,” “capital is restrained,” and “we never have enough money or time for new business leads” were the catchy tunes belted by Michael Russell. But with each set of challenges comes a set of solutions and the SVP of Pierpont had a valuable list of low-cost tactics of developing new business. Ideas included hand-written letters, hosting c-level luncheons, power mapping and speaking at great events like Marketing Jam 09.

Stacy speaks to the crowd on the role of a Marketer.

Pierpont VP, Stacy Armijo struck a chord with every AMA attendee when with her anthem “Defending the Role of Marketing.” A veteran of corporate marketing, Stacy offered insights and real-world tips on how a professional marketer can defend their role and value in today’s uncertain employment world. Stacy’s insights and advice included speaking to your bosses on their level, marketing yourself internally, tracking and reporting progress and showing a direct correlation between your day-to-day efforts with the company’s success.

Check Pierpont’s rock’n presentation, for more on what Michael and Stacy had to say.

Next up, was TradeMark Media. A solo act lead by Nick Weynand, Nick’s hit song was “Stop Tweeting and Start Thinking.” Tweet, tweet, tweet is a catchy tune, but Nick was quick to point out that tweeting without strategy is a tune that falls a bit flat.

Nick asks everyone to think before you tweet.

Nick took the crowd through a step-by-step approach to identifying the building blocks of developing strategy for clients. Determine your goals, understand your audiences, use research, survey your customers, and develop appropriate messages to the appropriate segmented groups. Nick touched on the DISC personality test and profiling system, then he declared the room an “I” given that so many marketers were in the audience. We’re know as a bunch who is sociable, talkative, energetic and talks more than listens.

Jam through Nick’s power point below.

The next act was another duet. This time, it was Annie Williams and Jim Hitch with Emma. With a dose of humor in their set, Annie and Jim wanted e-mail marketing and social media to give each other a “hug.” Their presentation was aptly titled “Social media and e-mail marketing are friends. And not just on Facebook.” E-mail marketing expert, Annie Williams, politely asked social media to “drop your weapons” and then took the AMA groupies through a series of definitions of social media and industry statistics. It first hit Annie that social media was big when her mom’s friend requested her on Facebook. The AMA Marketing Jam attendees learned that if Facebook was a country, it would be the 6th most populist country in the world. Additional stats included Facebook growing by 600,000 users per day and receiving more daily searches than Yahoo.

Annie and Jim declare Email Marketing and Social Media are friends. Really!

Jim Hitch joined the set half-way through and together, the duet from Emma demonstrated how companies can utilize e-mail marketing to send their clients relevant, targeted messages and create an online community for branding purposes in the social marketing medium. Marketing is a team sport, so said Jim and Annie and they demonstrated how e-mail marketing and social marketing can and should work together with real world case studies with Southwest Airlines and the New York Times.

For more on what Jim and Annie had to say, careen their groovin slide deck.

And with that, the Marketing portion of the evening was completed and it was time for the AMA crowd to get to the Jam portion of the evening. AMA members and guests were treated to fun, networking, food and spirits while the band Lip Service played our favorite hits from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. The vibe was all Austin - casual, fun and energetic. The AMA attendees had ample time to hang with each other, network and enjoy a Tuesday evening in Austin with good tunes, friends and marketing discussions. Check out some additional pics from the event from our FlickR stream.

Photos from Marketing Jam 2009

“I wanna rock-n-roll all night and practice marketing every day.” Let us know what you thought about this year’s Marketing Jam. I had a great time and learned something new along the way. See you at Marketing Jam 2010.

About Darren Drewitz

Darren has 16 years of strategic and integrated marketing experience on both the client and agency sides. He has experience in both B2B and B2C marketing, including the multi-location, food, logistics, building & construction and tourism industries. Darren specializes in developing year-long strategic and integrated marketing plans designed to align business objectives with marketing initiatives. Darren lives in Austin, Texas with his wife Melissa and their two sons. Darren serves as an account director for MQ&C Advertising, a 25-year-old, full-service marketing and advertising agency.

Did you like the programming you just read? It’s always better in person. Visit the Austin American Marketing Association website (www.austinama.org) for upcoming events, membership information and volunteer opportunities.

From Nick Wenand, President & Strategy Director, Trademark Media. Nick will speak at the AMA Marketing Jam on Tuesday, May 12^th.

I’m excited about the opportunity to share the knowledge I have with people in the marketing profession. I hope I’ll be able to deliver an impactful presentation with some real takeaways that everyone will be able to go back to the office and start using right away.

The title of my presentation is Stop Tweeting and Start Thinking: Developing your Interactive Marketing Strategy. I chose this topic because the landscape of interactive marketing has evolved so much since the advent of the Internet 20 years ago. Now there are so many platforms to make yourself heard: Web sites, blogs, social media, search engines, etc. The list goes on and on.

I believe that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for marketers to choose the best tools from this complex web of possibilities and really do a great job marketing online.

In order to do this, it’s my argument that you need a very solid interactive marketing strategy, one that consolidates the most useful platforms for your audience and product and sets forth a clear plan of action that will meet your end goals.

In my talk I’ll discuss how to go about developing this strategy, and we’ll touch on some of the latest tools that marketers are using to make themselves heard online.

If you have ideas about how I can make my presentation even better, please send them my way by commenting here.

I’m really looking forward to May 12^th.

Join us for Marketing Jam ’09 as we rock out and share new ways to grow your business and make the most of your marketing dollars. Attendees will learn from Austin’s leading marketing experts, including: Pierpont Communications ; TradeMark Media; and Emma Email Marketing. Following the presentations, attendees will enjoy networking, appetizers, cocktails and live music from Austin’s own Lip Service. Let’s rock!

Nick Weynand is the founder, president and strategy director for TradeMark Media, an award-winning interactive agency located here in Austin. Nick started the company in 1999 shortly after earning his degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Since 1999, Nick has dedicated his time at TradeMark Media to building a company that supports the highest Web standards in the industry.

The following is a recap of Rohit Bhargava’s presentation at the March 18^th AMA Power Lunch Series luncheon. This post includes a podcast and a slide cast of the presentation, which you can play together.

Standing out from the crowd is the chief challenge for any brand.  To communicate brand identity in the new world of social media, companies must adopt a clear personality.  Sensing the underlying implications of the rise of social media, Rohit Bhargava wrote Personality Not Included, a book about the end of the faceless company and the need to build a brand with personality.

He brought his extensive knowledge and exprience to share with AMA members in a power lunch presentation entitled Why Personality Matters: The Untold Secret of Marketing in the Social Media Era.

During the lunch, Rohit explained that

“The story of the rise of social media is not about the tools that are out there…. it’s about a cultural shift, and that is that people want to see businesses with humanity.”

His presentation took the group through the definition of personality, dos and don’ts of social media marketing, and the ultimate importance of building personality “when you need to give people a reason to believe in something.”

Why Personality Matters

View more presentations from Austin ama Chapter.

Listen to Rohit’s presentation

 

Image by ogilvyprworldwide via Flickr

Social Media is quickly becoming “the place to be” for people to learn, play, interact and get the latest news. Traditional forms of media and news are beginning to fall by the way side. There are a handful of major U.S. cities that have lost their daily newspapers to interactive online versions. People are joining Facebook and Twitter faster than the US is increasing the national deficit. So how can you take advantage of all this growth and change to intensify your traditional marketing strategies?

1. Stop barging in on people.

No one likes commercials (with the possible exception of Super Bowl Commercials), and advertising in general tends to interrupt the natural flow of life. Social Media allows for involvement instead of interruption. Instead of sending direct mail pieces, mass emails, or making me wait to watch Paula and Simon argue on American Idol, you can setup a fan page on Facebook which allows users to promote the cause themselves. You haven’t interrupted anybody and the user interaction door has been opened. Of course, you still need to get the word out the fan page exists, but Social Media has some nifty tools for that as well.

2. An endless supply of user generated content, or UGC.

This one aspect alone makes Social Media extremely attractive to marketers. In the last few years, UGC has moved beyond blogs, forums, and comments. Social Media tools have been used to encourage communities to create everything from a band’s music video to the next t-shirt design for sale. Following the success of Threadless, the wildly popular site Woot branched off to create shirt.woot. These sites solicits shirt designs from users and then have the community vote on which should be printed. They only make and sale shirts that receive the most votes. Starting a UGC campaign can be tricky, and must be thoroughly monitored. You need to walk the line between encouraging creativity and protecting the brand.

3. No more collateral damage.

Focusing your marketing efforts on the exact audience you want to reach is always a challenge. Although Social Media is relatively new, the search and reporting features are robust. So many new services are coming out for Twitter alone that it’s almost impossible to keep up. TwitterHawk allows you to setup a search that sends you a list of all the tweets that match your exact criteria. Rudy’s could setup a search for the word bar-b-q, in Austin, within 5 miles and TwitterHawk sends you a list of all the tweets that match. Then you can either setup a mass response or respond to each individually. This may be the most targeted marketing ever.

4. Receive feedback really really fast!

I’m sure we’ve all heard the adage, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” In marketing, if we don’t, or can’t measure the effectiveness of our campaigns, then we don’t last very long. Companies spend big bucks on focus groups and other analytics to help them determine the effectiveness of their advertising. With Social Media, you can receive that information almost instantly. Sometimes a little feedback, combined with some PR and customer care, is just the boost a campaign needs.

5. Social Media can be scary.

Not controlling when and where people see your advertising, no boundaries to the distribution of materials, users creating products and content, instant negative feedback. All these things are can leave you with an uneasy feeling, but these are some of the greatest things about Social Media. It puts you at the cutting edge, and the edge of anything can be a scary place. I think it’s safe to say Social Media is not the next slap bracelet, parachute pants, or snuggie. The Twitter’s, Facebook’s, and LinkedIn’s may come and go, but the Social Media culture is here to stay.

Question of the day: Where does Social Media rank as a marketing tool in the history of mankind? (Compared to paper, the printing press, telephones, etc.)

~ Josh

About Josh Ward

Josh Ward

Josh is the Partner Program Manager at Volacci Search Engine Marketing, where you can find Josh’s podcasts, videos, and blog. He focuses his efforts on creating raving fans of both clients and partners. Josh’s addiction to twitter can be supported @joshdward.

If you attended the AMA/BusinessWire event on social media, you would have seen these three speakers on stage: Erica O’Grady in her nice pink cowgirl hat, Giovanni Gallucci in a standard issue cowboy hat, front brim tucked down low, and Dave Evans, in a very Austin-esque green cowboy hat, with fringe and blinking lights.

Don’t let the props fool you. Despite the mardis-gras decorations and fun atmosphere, the content presented by each of the panelists was excellent. So much so that all three speakers went over their allotted time. No one stopped them or used a cane to pull them off stage because the content was genuinely great.

The first presenter, Erica O’Grady, is a social media consultant based in Houston, Texas. Although she doesn’t want to claim such a title. Apparently, the term “social media” was the first word condemned to the 9th circle of hell on BuzzwordHell.com. Between this condemnation and the title being usurped by any number of unqualified companies and individuals, Erica decided to use a different title: New Media and Loyalty Marketing Specialist. However, after Erica changed her title no one knew what she did. In other words, the lexicon of the industry is still being formed. And when something as fundamental as choosing the words to describe what we do is in flux, those trying to learn are left in a puddle of confusion.

The night’s second presenter, Giovanni Gallucci, has worked on developing online communities for over 10 years and is an expert in search engine technology. And one of the very first things he said when he took the podium was that he subscribes to a philosophy that overtly contradicts Erica’s methodology. Erica is all about building relationships; Giovanni is all about gaining influence. Erica is about building community and “doing the right thing.” Giovanni has a programming background and is more concerned with crunching numbers and delivering ROI — no matter what it takes. Some might call Erica a practitioner of the softer side of marketing, such as “brand” and “loyalty.” Some might accuse Giovanni of being a practitioner of “black hat” marketing (marketing that might be less than scrupulous).

The important message was to focus on being true to your brand and to your customers. Social media is, in its own way, putting these things under a magnifying glass. In fact, Erica and Giovanni agree that all successful social media campaigns have two things in common: authenticity and an experience that encourages people to participate.

Giovanni shared a great example of why authenticity and participation matter. A company called Viewzi, creators of a new search engine technology, were working on growing the user base and decided to do a video demo to post on YouTube. They hired professional actors, who did a very professional, polished, efficient job. But something about it wasn’t right. So they decided to try again with an “unseasoned” actor, someone they found through a Craig’s List ad. Their new spokesperson was a student at the local university and, as it turned out, was a programmer. And she spoke with authenticity.

The video was posted and the community loved it. It found its way through local TV channels to CNN.com and onto several print outlets. Why? Because the whole process was authentic and encouraged people to get involved.

The evening’s last speaker, Dave Evans brought it all home. Dave recently published Social Media: An Hour a Day, and expounded on a central theme within the book: Social Media gives marketers a unique opportunity to touch customers where traditional marketing can’t reach.

Traditional marketing works well to generate awareness to get your offering into the consideration set of a prospect. But while the prospect is considering which option is best, there’s not much traditional marketing can do. Traditional marketing comes back into play after the prospect essentially raises his or her hand to say “yes, I’m ready to buy,” and helps pull the customer across the finish line. So how does marketing get involved in the consideration phase? Through social media.

The traditional sales funnel has three phases: awareness, consideration, and purchase and the content associated with it is largely marketer generated. The extended sales funnel goes past the point of purchase, when customers are using the product, forming opinions, and making recommendations. All of this is user-generated content that shapes the opinions and outcomes of prospects that are in the consideration phase of the sales funnel.

The Author
Matthew Parente’s many years of marketing experience have given him the opportunity to master his abilities as an innovator, collaborative leader, and a professional renowned for his attention to detail as well as his analytical and efficiency skills. Noted for his pragmatic approach in creating and implementing marketing strategies and processes, Matthew shares his knowledge frequently by speaking at industry events, educational seminars, blogging, and contributing articles to various publications.

Has your organization recently decided to join the Social Media train before it pulls out, leaving you behind?

Great, so your marketing team or your PR team or perhaps your Sales team has persuaded someone to allow the organization to have a Social Media presence, now what. Whether its Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, a blog or some other platform, now you are out there what are you going to do with the opportunity and how do you communicate with the rest of your organization why you are there and what you are doing?

Sooner or later, and given the current economic climate, most likely sooner, someone is going to start asking you those difficult questions, like “How do we know this is working?”.

Telling the CFO that you are now able to “Throw Sheep, Pass Drinks or Send Plants to 10 more people than yesterday” is probably not going to win them over. Like any communications program there has to be something more measurable.

But measuring your presence on a Social Media platform is not so easy. If you run a commercial on TV with, say an 800 number you can measure call volumes around the times the commercial is aired. You can measure conversions from those calls; you can even break the data down by media regions – all useful metrics. But how do you do that with a platform that has a global audience and that isn’t really interested in hearing your sales pitch?

One of the first things to do is obtain a baseline. How much of a conversation are you currently having with your customers and potential customers before you start the Social Media effort? If you are honest this might be a very low number. The amount that increases is an easy number to track and measure across your Social Media users.

Measuring how many of the interactions you are having that are originated by customers or potential customers is a good way to see the reception that your organization is receiving on a given SM platform.

Depending on the size of your organization and your budget for Social Media, you are probably going to want to invest in some tracking tools. Some of these are free and will certainly give you a reasonable indication of how your SM campaign is doing. However, the downside of these tools is that they tend to be specific to a particular platform or method of communicating or provide only the broadest of statistics. Because of this you may find that you are experiencing increased costs in human resources, because in addition to interacting through the various SM platforms someone will have to obtain the data from all of these tools. It maybe that you find yourself investing in true SM monitoring tools and as such it is best to factor this cost into your original budget.

In the final analysis, all organizations by now should have realized that Social Media is not going away, it is not a fad. True the platforms we use may come into and go out of fashion but the act of engaging with our customers and potential customers in conversations that go far beyond those we have had before will not go away and will only increase. So the best tip for an organization thinking of a Social Media campaign? – Take FDR’s advice – “Do Something. If it works, do more of it. If it doesn’t, do something else. - If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

How do you measure your Social Media efforts?

Simon Salt

Simon Salt is CEO & Co-Founder of IncSlingers an Integrated Marketing Communication company. Writer, blogger at his own blog, mashable.com & dad-o-matic. Social Media addict. He can be found on Twitter as @incslinger