Social Media isn’t Marketing on the Cheap

2012-02-14 10:51:57 by Frank

Just read an excellent set of guidelines from Econsultancy which sums up something that has been troubling me for a while now. Social media looks like a low-cost option for marketing but you really need to dedicate resource to it if it’s to make any impact on your business.

We come across many companies who have had a stab at social media and then given up the ghost. The tell tale signs are: LinkedIn profile doesn’t contain any of the senior people because it’s only a couple of juniors who are comfortable with the platform. The blog starts and then fades away. The Twitter activity is a curious mix of learned comment and X Factor references.

This report will not tell you how to do it but it might just stop you from making a hash tag of it and give you some solid business rationale for social media marketing. You can never outsource your whole social media activity, as by its nature it has to be personal, but you can get external help in terms of advice and content creation. You might want your PR company to focus on developing white papers, case studies or tip sheets which you can then use to add depth and richness to your social media campaign.