MarketingExperiments Blog: Research-driven optimization, testing, and marketing ideas

Many marketers can be separated into one of two camps when it comes to social media. There are the toe dippers. They’re just trying to gauge the temperature of the pool and decide if they want to go in up to their ankle while they plan and speculate and observe what everyone else is doing.

And then there are the cannonballers. They throw caution (and brand equity) to the wind and jump on in, full force, watch out below.

Olympic dreams

As an operations guy, I focus on repeatable, disciplined process-oriented workflows, and the same operational structure that will bring you success in any other business (or sports) endeavor must be applied to social media.

In this post I’ll cover two often-overlooked aspects of social media, elements that George Colony refers to as listening and soliciting feedback, and how you can codify them into a consistent operating process. Read more…

The topic of social media measurement is almost as hot as the topic of social media. With only a few years of consistent data, we still remain in the shadow of the econometric models of the olden days, built for measuring the outcomes of PR and branding efforts.

The novelty and uncertainty of the field certainly haven’t stopped the burgeoning cottage industry of self-inaugurated gurus. This combination of ambiguity and hucksterism might scare off the ROI-driven marketer.

Now I am certainly not a social media marketing nay-sayer. Like most marketers, my gut tells me that there’s great opportunity here. However, the scientist in me demands evidence. And in business, evidence is ultimately in the ROI. Read more…

“…I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!” – Sally Field

Social media just makes us all feel so darn good, doesn’t it? I mean, look at me, my name and picture is right there in the upper left. Back in my advertising days, I had ads run in The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, but no one would ever know, since my name wasn’t attached.

And I’ve got followers on Twitter. And LinkedIn. And…

Sorry, did I just become an egoblogger?

On second thought…don’t look at me

This is why most social media marketing is so, well, outright bad. To go back to that study by Pear Analytics, 40% of tweets are “pointless babble.”

In a discussion last week with Pamela Markey, our Director of Marketing, she came up with the perfect phrase to describe this phenomenon – antisocial media.

Social is defined as “relating to human society and its members.” But, how many social media marketing practitioners are really relating to anything beyond what they are trying to promote? Read more…

If you’ve spent any time on Twitter, it will probably not shock you to learn that about 40% of tweets are “pointless babble,” according to Pear Analytics. In fact, in their recent study, they rated only 8.7% as having “pass-along value” – the gold standard for true viral marketing.

“I feel like eating Cheetos with my grilled cheese & turkey sandwich, but I have none “

This presents a huge challenge to the modern marketer. We all see social media and the real-time web as a pot of gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow. But with these new media awash in so much “pointless babble,” finding success with social media marketing is akin to trying to find that rainbow against a psychedelic sky of endlessly flashing colors.

So before our next free web clinic – Social Media Marketing in 4 Steps: A methodology to move from sporadic to strategic use based on research with 2,317 marketers – on which MarketingSherpa Research Director Sergio Balegno will share actionable insights from research on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogging, we thought we’d post this simple (and simply blunt) question to marketers:

How do you use social media to make money? Read more…

In my last blog post, I challenged you (and myself as well) to be more proactive in approaching customers for feedback. I recently found an excellent example on Twitter of an auto detailing supply company tying in the New Year with an offer to give feedback on things they can do better in the coming year.

Finding the right incentive

Notice they also offer a small incentive for providing feedback. However, it is important to note that the incentive is not a brand new car or a Neil Diamond Cruise Trip. It is just enough to pique the interest of followers, but probably not enough to cloud the feedback with nonsense in an effort for a chance at winning the car wax. Read more…

In middle school, I was fairly cerebral. OK, some would say nerdy. And while that mindset certainly paid off in the classroom, it didn’t help much at the middle school dance. My younger self would have delighted at being able to read a book that held the secrets to being the life of the party. I even tried exploring my trusty encyclopedia set (remember those) for an answer.

I share the awkwardness of my formative years because I believe that when it comes to social media, most experienced marketers are little more than brace-faced thirteen-year-olds staring at Twitter and Facebook like a poster of New Kids on the Block – you know deep-down a perfect marriage exists but just don’t know how to make it happen.

So I was delighted to hear that our sister company, MarketingSherpa, is close to releasing its second Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report. The subtitle, “Data and Insights for Mapping an Effective Social Marketing Strategy,” highlights what has largely been missing from the social media discussion over the past few years – real substance.

By combating the ample hype with an ROI-based strategy, I hope this benchmark study can guide marketers in the transition from, as Senior Analyst Sergio Balegno puts it, “novice to competent practitioner capable of achieving social marketing objectives and proving ROI.” And Sergio and his team hope to provide the guidance to get you there. As he says, “To make this leap, marketers will need benchmark data to help them better understand what works (and what doesn’t) in social media marketing, and a practical method for mapping a strategy that will lead them to social marketing success.”

MarketingSherpa let me have an early, pre-publication peak at their data and share one of my favorite insights with you on the blog today. The 2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report has 188 charts and tables, and the one below really caught my eye…

[click to enlarge]

The most effective tactic shown in the chart above – blogger relations – is used by far fewer organizations than less effective tactics primarily because of the effort required. At first glance, I thought the lesson from this chart is to start amping up blogger relations immediately.

But, as always with social media, hopping on the first thing one sees is the easy (and least effective) approach. And that’s what this chart is really showing. Too often, marketers focus on fast and easy ways to make use of social media instead of leveraging the most effective ways. Since social media is essentially free, why bother if something requires too much effort? Of course, in reality, social media is not free. You must invest a significant amount of time to do it right.

According to the Benchmark Report, “This focus on ‘fast and easy’ versus effectiveness is a problem that is far more prevalent with organizations in the trial phase of social marketing maturity than with more advanced social marketers working from a strategic social marketing plan.”

You see, in the end the most profitable approach to this new medium isn’t so new after all. Be strategic. Twitter is a tactic, not a strategy. And the real perfect marriage occurs when you pair proven marketing principles from your overall plan with social media tactics that make sense in your overall strategy.

You probably intrinsically know that this is the right thing to do, but I hope this little reminder helps you stay focused on what really works for your company as you execute on your 2010 plan. As for marrying the cute one from New Kids on the Block…I’ve got no advice to help you there.