Extracting value from Social Media Marketing

A recent report from the United States indicates that even as some businesses are watching profits crumble before their eyes and others struggle to keep their bottom lines in the black, that spending on social media marketing in 2009 is not predicted to decrease at the same rate as other online spending. In fact, amongst organisations that are faring well despite the economic downturn, social media marketing budgets are on the increase.
The review conducted by The National Retail Federation’s Shop.org and Forrester Research reveals that of the 30 percent of retailers planning to reduce their online spending this year 56 percent of them are cutting spending on search engine marketing. Only 24 percent will cut their social media marketing budget.
The term Social Media and social media marketing are used pretty fast and loose. What uses are Social Media being put to? What are the benefits and how are these companies using social media marketing to grow their businesses?
Key benefits include direct customer communication, the speed of feedback, learning customer preferences, the low cost, brand building potential, market research, credibility, reach and customer service. That only 20% of executives see social media marketing as being a great sales lead tool might suggest that SMM genuinely adding to the bottom line has a long way to go. At the moment it is little more than a component of the overall online marketing mix.
Whether the potential of SMM is being overlooked, under appreciated or simply not exploited properly is unclear. Certainly there are companies who’ve leveraged impressive sales through SMM. One immediately thinks of Dell and their Twitter special offers campaigns. If SMM is to directly contribute to bottom lines unlocking its moneymaking potential is key.
There’s plenty of scope for improvement and it’s the challenge of winning that extra business that those progressive companies increasing their SMM expenditure over the next year are hoping to enjoy.

Social Media Optimisation v/s Social Media Marketing

SMM) and (SMO) are two new catch phrases that have appeared across web marketing sites over the last year. These seemingly interchangeable terms are used to define marketing through social media and social networking sites. However there appears to be much confusion over the precise meaning and as a result, the exact definition of these terms. The problem in making a distinction appears to be a result of confusion with viewing them as two different emerging marketing techniques.Social Media OptimisationSocial media optimisation is the process of refining a website i.e. optimising it, so that brand/site awareness and content are spread with little effort through social media and online communities. Rather than a banner ad or search ranking, users and visitors of the website act as carriers. Optimising can thus include any on-page techniques used such as improvements to the design and usability of the website which would help it become more compelling to users. This makes it more likely for them spread it through social media sites. A simple example of SMO is represented by adding social bookmarking links like “digg this”, “add to delicious” or “stumble upon” that are all over the web today.Social Media MarketingSMM in contrast, is representative of a creative perspective on marketing over social networking websites. It refers to crating and then distributing content and similar messages through the social web network using some form of viral marketing. The “viral marketing” content specified here could be a funny blog post that gets bookmarked and possibly makes its way to digg’s homepage or spreading a viral video by placing it on YouTube and other social media websites. The main difference is that the work here is off-site and involves engaging your potential customer base on territory familiar to them.To a certain extent, the two terms can be contrasted similar to push and pull marketing. With SMM, advertisers push their message out into the social media. However, once out there the message should not require any more pushing. A true viral marketing campaign must generate its own momentum so that it spreads on its own, creates a buzz and people actually want to spread it. Thus with SMM the campaign starts with creation and ends shortly with planting of this campaign. SMO, on the other hand, focuses on pulling people in with an “optimised” site. Visitors are then expected to spread content present with minimal effort on your part. SMO is at some levels a second stage of the SMM process.These two new phenomena cannot be ignored in the web marketing world. SEO firms are now looking to social media with more intensity to provide the added exposure for their marketing campaigns.