The Power of Social Media

I have come across many great posts on why companies should be running Social Media Marketing (SMM) campaigns lately. I think that SMM people are starting to get tired of being dismissed by the incumbent traditional media folks who, with good reason, seem to be opposed to SMM because they just don’t “get it.” Traditional media agencies still dominate in the advertising world, but the balance of power is shifting at an alarming rate to interactive agencies. And for good reason, traditional media is much more expensive and less effective than digital. Now that does not mean that TV, radio, and print do not have their place because those are all still very important forms of marketing. But what it does mean is that C-level execs are finally starting the shift to digital and this shift has been further accelerated by the poor economy, diminishing budgets, and the need for higher ROI and measured marketing initiatives. Everyone wants to know EXACTLY what they will get for their marketing dollar.

That level of prediction on marketing campaigns is a tough thing to manage when it comes to SEO and SMM. For paid media it is much easier to know and measure since you get the measured results almost immediately. You can make quicker adjustments, basically on the fly. With SEO and SMM you need to execute and then wait and see and with SEO sometimes the waiting could be 12 months+ depending on your goals.

And for social media I think that many SMM consultants struggle with nailing down solid metrics and then measuring those metrics to the fullest extent. This is in part because of client ignorance or stupidity and in part because of the organic nature of SMM. But there are effective ways to overcome these issues and SMM is becoming more widely adopted. The companies that are getting it right are WAY ahead of their competitors and are enjoying incredible returns, especially since SMM tends to be extremely cost effective.

Here is an awesome video I found from Outspoken Media today that pretty much nails it:

I think that like SEO, SMM is becoming more acceptable to C-level execs and that with time it will have an increased presence in the online marketing mix. I see more and more SEO adoption by C-level execs and SMM will see the same adoption curve. The ROI from both SEO and SMM is unparalleled and in the end this will win the day!