Just a quick post today to discuss something I think needs to go away – the unidirectional nature of social marketing. For many companies social media efforts are driven by one or two individuals who hear about trends on the news or from an article and turn to their marketing team barking orders. These orders generally take the shape of focusing on (a) bloggers, (b) facebook/myspace, (c) twitter or (d) an-in house community. If your company is anything like this it’s time to fight back.
While each individual social media channel is important and in your particular niche one may be super important, it’s the sum total of these channels that makes a successful presence and campaign. Focusing on just one at the time is to the determent of the greater impression as people don’t just use one channel. Furthermore trying to influence just one channel is difficult if not impossible when you don’t have the others behind it. For example, if you have negative blog commentary having a strong reputation with social networking sites like twitter may help you spread comments to those bloggers and shed a different light on your brand. Flippign things around if you have great mass market response but some bad blog posts showing up for your branded term you’re getting a bad hit that you just don’t need.
I know it’s not possible to get enough resources to do everything perfectly but don’t skip one area just to try and make another seem perfect – it won’t work. Instead focus on the big areas of opportunity bit spend some time in the others – court a few bloggers, send a few samples, stay on twitter even if you don’t post a lot, create a facebook page and use it from time to time. This way no matter where someone searches you’re there and as the trends change (and they will change) you’ll already have a foot in that door.