Marketing Autopsy Blog » Viral Marketing

Must-Have Formula For Business Social Media Advertising

Cuong Huynh — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:18:30 +0000

Everyone knows that advertising isn’t cheap. This is why social media is becoming a very important advertising channel. When done right, this low-cost “advertising platform” beats out all the other advertising methods hands down in terms of cost and effectiveness. A small or medium business should have six social media elements, according to Heather Lutze in a recent article at Tech Journal South called “Social media advertising strategy: six profiles you must have.”

Called the “Social Media Advertising Formula,” Ms. Lutze says there are six essential platforms that business owners must have to garner the potential of social advertising. Each platform offers you specific ingredients that only it can offer, so you’re not duplicating your social media effort when active on each one while targeting your message to targeted audience. Additionally, each platform allows you to optimize your presence and message best suited to its strongest points, furthering the effectiveness of your presence online. Targeting your audience and optimizing your presence equal best social advertising potentials.

Let’s look at the six.

LinkedIn. This business profile site ranks well in search engines and is a great platform to keep business associates updated on your business events. To optimize your profile on LinkedIn, select one core keyword and use it frequently, but not without being spammy or sacrifice user experience.
Facebook. This is a closed community so it does not rank in search engines. It is an effective place for personal profile online, but you can also use your business keywords to optimize your marketing effort. To optimize your profile on Facebook, select one business keyword and aim to become the subject matter expert in this community.
MySpace. This is an open community, ranks very good in search engines, and allows full profile for businesses. To optimize your profile on MySpace, again use a specific keyword for your business, and take advantage of the search function to create an effective MySpace outreach network.
YouTube. This is the biggest and most well known video sharing platform, and still is the best for viral marketing campaigns. You can run marketing campaigns for your own business and for your clients as well. To optimize your YouTube campaign, use each video to target specific keyword, and use the same keyword in both the video title and its description.
Blog. You blog is one of the most important and easiest platforms to get yourself ranked high in organic search engine results. Blogs are also a great tool to build trusted followers as you build your (or your business’) own reputation. To optimize your blog, use specific keyword(s) for each post and use the same keywords in the meta title, meta description, and in the body of the post itself. Check out Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
Twitter. This is the hottest micro blogging platform currently. Though it has several limitations, Twitter can be an effective tool for business as many can attest. Twitter posts are open so they also rank well in search engines. To optimize your presence on Twitter, brand your profile to reflect your product/service expertise, while using keywords in all your Twitter posts.

Read more on Heather Lutze’s “Social media advertising strategy: six profiles you must have.”

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Must-Have Formula For Business Social Media Advertising

Brands, Social Media, Authentic Relationships and Ultimate Success

Cuong Huynh — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 19:13:08 +0000

JD Lasica recounted the Your Brand, Their World event at Razorfish on August 18 in San Francisco. The goal was to draw social media thought leaders and experts together to “discuss the ways in which social media is changing the relationship between customers and brands, and what it means to marketers, merchandisers, product developers, customer service organizations, R&D and senior management.”

Participants included Garrick Schmitt, GVP Experience Planning for Razorfish and an expert panel consisting of Megan O’Connor, Levi’s; Michael Brito, Intel; Marisa Gallagher, Razorfish; Sam Faillace, Shutterfly, and Jon Swartz, USA Today (moderator.) In addition, an engaging audience of social media and marketing specialists was present to share their views.

Here are some of ideas and highlights coming out of the panel and audience interaction.

An interesting tweeting strategy for business: the 80-20 rule. Michael Brito tweets 80 percent personal and 20 percent business, which is a great reference for both beginner and experienced tweeple. If you are not sure about what mix your messages should have, this is a good starting point.
Social media should not be the ultimate marketing tool but must be an important element in the marketing mix. Not all companies need a Faccebook or Twitter account. Ultimately, the key is to know what you want to achieve with social media and select the appropriate tools to meet your goals.
While return on investment (ROI) is not an easy thing to quantify from social media marketing activities, Marisa Gallagher mentioned one of the best metrics: sales. This is right on because regardless of your goals for a specific campaign (brand awareness, survey participation, opinion gathering, etc.) what really matters to all company is sales.
On Twitter followers, following and the value of realistic interaction, a great bottom line message seems to emerge. It’s this: “You can effectively interact with maybe a small finite number of people, but do not discount the benefit of having many more followers/friends. They may be lurkers and never interact with you, but they have their own networks, can like/don’t like what you say/offer, and will share their opinions about you with the world.”
Someone from the audience offered a clear, simple and easy to understand roundup of inbound vs. outbound marketing. “Outbound is the traditional form of interruption advertising (commercials on TV, a billboard interrupting your thought process), while inbound marketing is about people opting in or getting recommendations from friends.”
Here’s a little “Ah-ha!” moment on why a company decided to deploy (or not) social media: “The auto companies don’t have as much fear jumping into social media as some of the other incumbents because it’s do or die for them,” as commented by Gallagher. Sure, we all know the phrase: “Live everyday like it’s your last.” That’s how you make a difference.

There are a bunch more great takeaways from that meeting. Read more of JD Lasica’s post “Social media, brands and the way forward” over at socialmedia.biz.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Brands, Social Media, Authentic Relationships and Ultimate Success

Ford Gets Bloggers Involved in “What Women Want” for Instant Buzz

Cuong Huynh — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:24:22 +0000

“What Women Want.” That’s how Ford did it.

Getting bloggers involved. Prominent, well-known women bloggers. And get instant buzz in the process. It’s focus groups at work in the new social media space. There’s nothing wrong with it and it’s not a new trend. Pepsi did it in their Pepsi rebranding campaign. The Air Force is doing it in their Air Force social media push. And you remember 3M’s Post-It Note Carjacks? Now Ford is doing it with refined social media skills. But really, bloggers watch out, you may be part of a bigger PR machine without realizing it.

Check out any of these Ford YouTube videos. Here are some samples of blogger reviews.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU-A6kCnbTA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDC1sBQY038

Ford describes the event in an article titled “Ford Wants to Know: What do Woman [sic] Really Want?” which included breakfast with a Ford executive, a day packed with hands-on tours, test drives and roundtable discussions, and I’m sure schwags. By the way, the event was conducted during the 5th Annual BlogHer ‘09 Conference, July 23-25, 2009. Quite timely and convenient.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve always advocated that businesses need to get more into social network marketing and develop strong new media strategies. But there’s a grey area that both companies and bloggers need to be careful not to cross. In this case, to me anyway, if Ford really wants to get women’s input to help design future cars, the company probably won’t get them just from this narrow group of women demographic. But they will get a lot of free blog posts and discussions out of it, that’s for sure.

The final score: thumbs up for Ford marketing, a “huh, what were you thinking?” for the bloggers.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Ford Gets Bloggers Involved in “What Women Want” for Instant Buzz

How to Build a New Media Corporate Marketing Team

Cuong Huynh — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:29:52 +0000

You know what I’m talking about. New media. You know, social media, social marketing, blogging, and Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc, for your company? Many have found success where many others have failed. In the corporate environment, pursuing social media marketing is a full-time job.

Corporate social networking functions require individual special skills and knowledge, plus clear corporate objectives and goals. For companies that want to get with it in social media and marketing, don’t just try a few things here and there using inexperienced resources. What you need is focus and dedication. The key is to develop a clear reason why you want to be in the blogosphere, and provide dedicated resources to achieve those goal.

Here are the minimum considerations that must exist for your social media marketing to stand any chance of making a difference. Anything less will be just a waste of your time, money and human resources.

Establish a clear corporate social networking policy, the rules of engagement so to speak. It does not have to be detailed or elaborate, but it needs to have the basics in place. Remember this is still emerging technology.
Create your team from enthusiastic and knowledgeable individuals. They don’t have to be your best marketers or sales persons. In fact they should not be. The key characteristics you’re looking for include: being savvy with new technology and tools, being passionate about the company, its products and services, and above all, being honest with high ethics.
Empower and authorize team members to do what’s best for the company. If your team is knowledgeable and passionate, then they’ll do anything to ensure the best interest and protection for the company and its reputation. They are smart, and they’ll do the right things.
Always be on the look out for opportunities to go viral, especially in support of customer-generated viral media. All you need is to be there, provide support, and maybe give a little nudge. It’s social marketing after all. Do it right and you’ll attract loyal followers.

What about corporate legal? Do you need to get their blessing all the time? Probably not. Just do what’s right. Here’s what I mean. As long as you’ve made the proper communication with legal department and addressed corporate policies from the beginning, legal may just be your best friends in the company to get your social networking job done.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

How to Build a New Media Corporate Marketing Team

How to Benefit from Twitter Trending Topics and Keep Your Marketing Integrity and Ethics Too

Cuong Huynh — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 22:00:35 +0000

Trending topics on Twitter is a double-edged sword. It gives users instant snapshots of what the hot topics are on Twitter. At the same time it opens the floodgate for Twitter spams and misinformation. I’m all for pushing the latest and greatest tools for marketing use, but it should be done responsibly.

We all know Twitter is free (at least for now.) And because it is a social tool, interestingly, Twitter itself can potentially be destroyed by how its users use it – mass destruction so to speak. Spams and misinformation will only have negative effects on Twitter, which eventually will hurt the whole community.

So here are some tips on how to use Twitter trending topics to your benefits while maintaining your own integrity and ethics.

Get involved in hot and active conversations.
Stay on topic and be relevant.
Have fun, be yourself, and help others.
Leave self-promotions at the door (or at the keyboard.)
Un-follow those who regularly and knowingly start and/or re-tweet spams and falsification.
And most importantly: Don’t try to benefit from Twitter trending topics.

Share your views with a comment below.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

How to Benefit from Twitter Trending Topics and Keep Your Marketing Integrity and Ethics Too

Twitter’s Achilles’ Heels May Be Its Biggest Challenge

Cuong Huynh — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:34:18 +0000

Twitter is a great tool as many would attest. It can do so much with so little and provide the intimacy, simplicity and immediacy that not many other platforms can even come close. While many social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace can expect to continue to command large memberships and usage, Twitter needs to get its act together before its Archilles’ heels bring it down. I’m talking about Twitter spams, and to a less extent, Twitter’s lack of a business/commercial model.

In recent years, it seems that there is a new social network kid in town every year that gets all the attention and leaves everyone else in the dust. This year it’s Twitter. Last year it was Facebook. Before that, MySpace. For Twitter, numerous third party tools and applications have been created to make it even easier to use while providing amazing additional features. But because of the (seemingly) lack of strict quality guidelines of what the users can and can’t do, Twitter spams are becoming prevalent.

Twitter spams are not out of control yet, in my opinion. But it’s reaching a point where it hinders additional explosive growth of the Twitter platform. Sure there are many new users signing up. But I think the vast majority joined out of curiosity and not necessarily needs. And let’s face it, Twitter itself is simple but not very intuitive, so it requires somewhat of a learning curve on the part of new users, and requires them to stick with it to “get” it. Coupling this with high potential for spams will probably keep Twitter to the status of being just another cool, but niche, tool for individuals, and just another tool for business, as opposed to a great tool for the mass and an essential tool for marketers.

But then again maybe we’re trying too hard to make Twitter our own. According to Twitter creator Jack Dorsey as reported on theonion.com, “Twitter was intended to be a way for vacant, self-absorbed egotists to share their most banal and idiotic thoughts with anyone pathetic enough to read them….” Mr. Dorsey said about how Iranians are using his tool that, “I couldn’t believe they’d ruined something so beautiful, simple, and absolutely pointless.” According to theonion.com, “he is already working on a new website that will be so mind-numbingly useless that Iranians will not even be able to figure out how to operate it.”

So the fact remains that Twitter will do whatever it wants to do. And lacking a clear (publicized) business/commercial plan, we’ll just have to take Twitter for what it is right now and be glad that such tool exists. Only the strong will survive, for both Twitter and its users.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Twitter’s Achilles’ Heels May Be Its Biggest Challenge

How to Increase Twitter Followers: Putting Twitter in Your Marketing ToolBox

Cuong Huynh — Fri, 01 May 2009 22:00:39 +0000

Updated 08-18-09. We’ve read all the buzz about using Twitter, from sources in print and online, from friends to co-workers. Do a quick search on your favorite search engine and you’ll find the latest tips on how to deploy and employ Twitter for personal and business purposes. It’s not hard to find tweeting theories, tips, tools and zillions of other advices on how to tweet successfully. What’s really lacking is a practical, realistic step-by-step guide to tweet, but I believe I’ve found one that’s easy yet detailed enough that will work with almost all things you apply to. I’m still testing it but so far it’s working great for me, and based on the process I believe it will continue to help me for a long time to come.

Like many marketers, I’ve looked for solutions for tweeting but never really found anything that sounded and looked good enough to even start. And I know many others have actually tried a few with varying degree of success, but those were never long-term successes for many reasons. This process I’ll describe here works because it’s simple, realistic and doable. There are some pretty basic ideas mentioned here, plus a few more advanced concepts. Together as a package they provide one powerful tool. So here’s the process.

Social network etiquette still rules. Whatever you do, do not forget the basic rules and etiquette of social network and social marketing. After all Twitter is a blogging tool and a social networking tool that you should respect while using it. Take advantage of it like you would LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace, but do not abuse.
It’s still all about helping others find what they need. Unlike traditional marketing (some call it “outbound marketing”,) social network has never been and will never be about you and/or your company. It’s all about contributing what you can to the social network and help other people solve their problems.
You must know your target social groups and customers. Assuming you have something to offer (expertise, skills or knowledge,) you need to focus on your niche and not take the shotgun approach. By focussing on your target groups you’ll be more relevant. There are plenty of tools out there to help you find people with particular interests, but one of the best ways to target a group is to tweet from both your heart and your head, consistently (see 5. below.) Over time your group will find you. It’s inbound marketing at work.
It’s important to apply your branding to your Twitter account. This includes your username, bio, background, etc. Use your business sense to do this, but whether this is for personal or business purpose, your brand is what you present to the world about you.
Start blogging, not just about what you had for lunch, but what you’re all about, what your interests are, and what you find important and useful you can pass on to others. You should know what your brand is about, and many tools are available to help you post/blog relevant topics all day long (as your time permits.) One such tool is the Google Alerts service. Also there are tools to automate posting of your content as well.
Find your targets to follow. Just like in any other industry, it’s all about finding and associate with people with the same interests, problems, pursuits or passions as your own. In the business world, another layer would be finding people with the same interests, problems, pursuits or passions as your business, either to give help to or get help from. In time if you have something to offer they will follow you back. And this is how you build your network. Again automation tools abounds to help you find targeted people and build your follower network.
Set up automation to greet new followers when they first follow you. It’s part of the social landscape, and greetings, together with your brand, are the first impressions in the social networking sphere. Be professional and never pushy. People who greet others with a sales pitch give a poor first impression.
Know what you want. I saved this for last but it may as well be your very first step. You must know what you want to achieve with Twitter in particular, and with social network in general. Whether it’s brand awareness, click through rates, traffic counts or whatever else is important to you, only you know this. So clearly define your goals and stay on track.

I have applied the above process successfully in conjunction with a tool called the “Twitter Traffic Machine.” It is an effective tool and process combination, and I’m applying it with great results for my clients. The Twitter Traffic Machine, and a few other similar offerings currently floating around the Internet, are getting a bad rap for what they’re trying to do as the end goal and are considered spam tools by many. My view is, of course any tool in the “wrong” hand or used irresponsibly can result in undesirable consequences. For me as a marketer, it’s a tool that I’ll take advantage of in my own ethical way.

The bottom line is, if you put this tool/process combination in your marketing toolbox and use it everyday with your other tools like SEO, SEM, direct/email marketing and ad promotion and tracking apps, then you’ll benefit from it. And like other great tools of the trade, you’ll have to really use it to benefit from it.

By the way for interesting reads on the Twitter bird and the brand, read Nils Geylen’s “The Twitter Logo, Or Is It?” and Cormac Kelly’s “The Birdie brand and the Twitter bird.” As it turns out Cormac Kelly is not making his post available online any longer, but he is very generous to allow his full post content republished here. Thanks Cormac! Find out what Cormac is up to these days, head over to Birdie Web Design.

The Birdie brand and the Twitter bird

Since I launched the Birdie site a couple of weeks back, there has been loads of great feedback, which is always appreciated, but it’s been mentioned a couple of times that the Birdie icon is similar to the Twitter bird. In this post i’ll address the comparisons and give a bit more background on the brand.

About Twitter

Twitter, for those living under a rock, is a mobile micro-blogging application. Users send and receive updates via text messages, and there are a load of third-party apps to feed updates to blogs and the like. I havn’t played with it much myself (it’s a bit too pervasive for my taste, but thats just me) but it’s a bit of a phenomenon and is widely used. Twitter have a very strong brand presence as a result.

In hindsight the comparison was always going to happen. Twitter has a lot of momentum right now, especially within the blogging and web communities, so pretty much anything with a little bird reference is going to bring Twitter to mind at the moment. Obviously this wasn’t my intention!

The origins of Birdie

A bit of context on the Birdie brand will help here. I came up with the name while I was looking at domain hacks, inspired by the social bookmarking site del.icio.us and the (really nice) Irish photo sharing site pix.ie. I started going through words that end in .ie and came across Birdie. It was perfect – memorable, personable and, in combination with the domain name, it gave me a real ’smile in the mind’ as they say.

It all tumbled along from there really. I ran it past a few people and they liked it (and my girlfriend loved it), so I registered the name, and then the URL. (Which I couldn’t believe was still available.)

Visual Designs

I designed the logotype and decided on the colours based on nothing more than my current personal taste. The final element was an icon to fit the name.

It’s here the Twitter comparisons really come in I guess. I don’t think it’s all that similar, or at least it’s no more similar than any other vector bird. Nils Geylen has kindly provided a comparison which puts this better than I can. (Thanks Nils.) Thing is, the two birdies have very similar histories: They are from the same place.

The Twitter bird imagery, on the home page at least, is from iStockPhoto, and is mostly by Simon Oxley of idokungfoo. The Birdie, um, birdie, is taken from iStockPhoto illustrations by Freelance Bloke. Take a look at Twitter’s here and Birdie’s here.

So there you have it. It’s all very flattering to be compared to such a good brand, and though I resent the rip accusation a bit I know it’s not true. There is also quite a long story about how I got my particular icon, but it’s too long and dull to get into here. Anyway, you know what they say – there is no such thing as bad publicity!

Have a tweet tip? Share it with us.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

How to Increase Twitter Followers: Putting Twitter in Your Marketing ToolBox

Buy One, Get One Free Electronic Coupons: Mobile Marketing at Work

Cuong Huynh — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 03:05:46 +0000

Updated 02-20-09. I took part in a mobile marketing campaign without realizing it until later. I just used an electronic coupon straight from my iPhone the other day. In the transaction I got what I wanted quickly and conveniently, and the merchant made a quick sale because the business took to online marketing. It’s cool, easy and simple, and I think companies will do more of it.

Whether or not you’re a fan of the restaurant Souplantation, you have to love their “Buy One, Get One Free” coupons. I must admit that we only go there when my wife finds a coupon in the mail. There are times when our cravings for soups and salads had to be overcome with some other alternative because we didn’t find a coupon that week, or didn’t have one on hand – I assured my wife that we’re not the only ones doing this.

Anyway we signed up for their Club Veg membership and now we receive special offers directly in our emails. So on a mid afternoon the other day while we were out on some errands, on a whim, she wanted to get some soups and salads. I remembered receiving something from Club Veg a few days ago, so I pulled out my iPhone, checked the email and guess what, there was a very nice looking coupon staring back at me, with bar code and everything!

Now normally you’d print the coupon out and take it with you. But I said let’s just go straight there since I wasn’t going to stop anywhere to print the darn thing to save a few bucks. I reasoned that they should be able to scan the barcode off of the iPhone if they must, or they can always key in the coupon numbers by hand. No big deal.

When presented with my electronic coupon, the guy at the register froze for a moment, then said he’ll have to check with the manager. When she came over, I showed her my coupon on my iPhone screen. She immediately approved the transaction. I paid and we were off to our table. My wife was very happy.

This is one perfect example of why mobile marketing should be in your company’s marketing mix. When executed correctly, everybody wins. The customers win with convenience, instant gratification and on-demand savings, and the merchant wins with quick sales resulting directly from their marketing campaigns targeted to customers’ real needs and demands.

I guess there is one loser in all of this mobile marketing excitement. Eventually, the U.S. Postal Service will see their business fall off even more as people find more ways to do business electronically.

Here are a few quick and easy tips to get your organization on the mobile marketing bandwagon quickly:

Keep your message simple, relevant, timely, and take advantage of and exploit mobile behaviors. The offer and call to action must be clear. Try this quick 1-2-3 approach in your message:
1. State what the offer is, clearly and quickly,
2. Explain how to get the offer immediately from the mobile devices in their hands, and
3. Suggest that they share the deal with their friends.
Start with quick download or coupon offerings because they are simple and easy to implement, and satisfy the need for immediate gratification.
Use short deadline offers to drive consumer action. Do daily deals, hourly deals, etc.
Never take the mobile marketing medium for granted. Assuming you did the proper front-end opt-in process to ask your customers’ permission for mobile communication, you must continually respect their time and privacy, and never abuse your mobile messaging privileges.

So have you experienced or been involved in mobile marketing in some capacity, from either business or customer side? What is your favorite mobile marketing campaign you’ve seen? Share with us in the comment below.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Buy One, Get One Free Electronic Coupons: Mobile Marketing at Work

Viral Marketing: Create a World Wide Rave with David Meerman Scott

Cuong Huynh — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:55:27 +0000

I missed the webinar and a chance to win his new book, but, courtesy of Hubspot’s Internet Marketing Webinars, here’s the video with David Meerman Scott discussing viral marketing, Feb 13, 2009.

David Meerman Scott’s World Wide Rave rules:

Nobody cares about your products (except you).
No coercion required.
Lose control.
Put down roots.
Create triggers that encourage people to share.
Point the world to your (virtual) doorstep.

Viral marketing. World wide rave. Looks like Mr. Scott is trying to brand a new social media phrase. I have no problem with this, but here’s real social media at work: he can do this because he’s become a “thought leader”, and we’re virally spreading his message.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Viral Marketing: Create a World Wide Rave with David Meerman Scott

Reason Companies Fear Social Media and Blogs: Maybe It’s Communication Itself

Cuong Huynh — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:34:23 +0000

Could it be that communication itself is a hindrance to corporations in adopting social media and blogs? Sounds counterintuitive but definitely possible. Consider the following.

What are some characteristics of getting involved in social media or maintaining a corporate blog? Is it being honest with your message? Is it being involved in the conversation regularly? Is it allowing comments, feedback and critiques to come back to you whether or not you want them? Is it having to take risks that you may lose trade secrets, private information, etc.? or is it all of the above?

Yes it’s communication itself. It’s the fear of getting or receiving something back unexpectedly – good is OK but what if it’s bad? It’s the fear of the unknown that’s outside of the normal outbound marketing, which marketers have control over. It’s the fear of the unknown and the what-ifs. It’s the fear of inbound marketing.

Admittedly, getting involved in corporate social media and blogs does require attention to the details mentioned above. These are in addition to the POST Method that I blogged about last November – People, Objectives, Strategy and Technology. But the reality is, if you have to take time thinking about each and every message or structuring and molding every communication piece before relating to your customers, then you may not understand your company, company culture, and value propositions as well as you should. Of course there are important and proper communication channels for corporate announcements, press releases and the like, but day-to-day relationship with your customers and prospects should be a tactical strategy in the same vein as public relations (PR). It should be constant.

So what ’s the solution? Maybe start with the following:

Understand that social media and blogs can be valuable corporate tools.
Create clear and flexible policies that foster more intimate communication with customers and prospects while minimizing risks to the company.
Empower the right individual(s) to carry out social media and blogs, working closely with every other departments within the organization.
Constantly monitor results (quantitatively and qualitatively) and be nimble to change direction as needed.

So what’s your experience? What have you found working successfully at your organization? Share with us in the comments.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
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Reason Companies Fear Social Media and Blogs: Maybe It’s Communication Itself

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