Social Marketing & Digital Agency

Social Media On the Up

A recent study by CMOSurvey.org of top US marketers found increased confidence in the overall market and prediction of marketing spend on the increase this year. Of that increase, the CMO Survey reports that internet marketing expenditure generally accounted for the largest increase, with social media marketing spend doubling.

Social media marketing spend in the USA exceeded 2009 levels by April this year, and is predicted to rise to 10% of total marketing spend in the coming year and nearly 18% in the next five years. The largest increase next year is to come from B2B service companies (doubling to nearly 12%) and, in fact, B2B priorities are leading the way across the board, with a sharp increase in all B2B marketing spend on both products and services.

This reflects what we have noticed this year at TMMC, as does the finding that over 72% of companies are outsourcing some or all of their marketing. We think this is a result of the recession, and the sharp evolution of social media and social media marketing, which has left many companies understaffed and struggling with a skills shortage in this key area.

If you want to promote your B2B company, product or service and don’t have the in house capacity – or you are a PR/marketing firm who has been asked to provide digital and/or social media solutions for your client – we can help by providing the perfect solution to your needs.

Just contact us today on 0845 862 0017 or email us on hello@themediamarketingco.com.

If there is one thing that gets our goat (as this blog has a farmyard feel about it) it’s companies who get a work experience student (or interns as we now call them, which sounds a lot more important) or a temp or a VA to ‘do a bit of twittering’.

Those folks over at www.spinsucks.com feel just the same, and you can read their take on it here  http://www.spinsucks.com/spin/should-interns-run-your-social-media-program/

We would like to nick the Chinese proverb that they quoted  “It takes years to take an egg and grow a chicken and an instant to make chicken dung.”

Why would you trust a wholly inexperienced person to write things about your brand? Brands are valuable commodities and companies spend years and usually an awful lot of money nurturing them and making sure that the brand is working for them because, hey, brands are big business. So we continue to be stunned that so many organisations still do not understand the significance of social media – neither the huge amount of positive things that it can do for them if used properly in an integrated campaign nor the terrible and costly damage that can be wreaked in inexperienced hands.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say again, social media must be treated in the same way as traditional media i.e. handled in-house by skilled marketing people and senior executives and/or outsourced to a specialist agency.

Just because a bright young thing has loads of mates on Facebook, it doesn’t mean that they are the best person to be your business’s ‘social face’ – after all, what do they know about corporate messaging and brand management, let alone crisis management when the s**t hits the fan?

Social media is not a standalone exercise – to be used to its greatest effect it must be integrated with the existing traditional sales, marketing and PR activities, not to mention HR and customer services, all things that your even your brightest intern will have little knowledge of, let alone expertise.

We have to confess that none of us are exactly spring chickens here at TMMC towers, but all of us have more than 20 years experience in not only Comms, Marketing, PR, Media etc, in all their various guises, but also Business and the Corporate world, not to be mention having been at the cutting edge of the 2.0 version ever since it hatched (sorry). Which means we really do know what we’re clucking on about (sorry sorry).

So if you are serious about taking advantage of the undoubted benefits that social media can offer as an integrated part of your marketing and PR strategy, drop us an email on hello@themediamarketingco.com or give us a ring on 0845 862 0017.

Measuring the ROI of Social Media - Forrester's Report gives a different perspective

A fabulous report has come out from those lovely folk at Forrester, who so eloquently put what we try to explain to clients and prospects on a regular basis – social media ROI isn’t just about money and the bottom line.

You can read an excerpt from Augie Ray’s report here, but basically, he says that companies must look at social media in a holistic way, and while a great deal of activity can be tracked and evaluated, some of it just can’t.

This doesn’t mean that it’s a black art that gives agencies carte blanche to charge large fees with no accountability. What it does mean is that social media can make a significant contribution to a business’s status, influence and brand perception even though these and other positives can’t be measured by strict metrics, financial or otherwise.

If you still have a boss who thinks that social media is a ‘bit of fun for the youngsters’ (yes, there are still people who think that), maybe you could get him to read the report and see how seriously an organization like Forrester takes social media these days.

Happy reading folks, and if you want to know how social media could make a hugely positive impact for your company as part of your marketing and PR initiatives, please get in touch today – we’d love to help!

Social Media is the Icing on Top of the Marketing Cake

A new report from the Nielsen Company has quoted some incredible statistics about Social Media. Here’s just some of them.

“Three of the world’s most popular brands online are social-media related (Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia) and the world now spends over 110 billion minutes a year on social networks and blog sites.

This equates to 22 percent of all time online or one in every four and half minutes.

For the first time ever, social network or blog sites are visited by three quarters of global consumers who go online, after the numbers of people visiting these sites increased by 24% over last year.

The average visitor spends 66% more time on these sites than a year ago, almost 6 hours in April 2010 versus 3 hours, 31 minutes last year.”

It’s pretty compelling isn’t it?

However another report from The Online Publishers Asssociation carried out by Harris Interactive found that online users trust content to varying degrees according to where it’s published. Media sites come out tops (giving ongoing credence to digital PR) with portal channels second and social media bringing up the rear.

Of  course, trust translates to buying patterns as well.

In an interesting article by Jason Fell at FOLIOmag.com he discusses these issues with Joe Pulizzi and the conclusion seems to be that brand marketers are beginning to invest more time and money in developing their own content on their own sites and driving traffic to it.

We couldn’t agree more.

The line that we’ll ‘get a student to do a bit of  tweeting’ is looking even more ridiculous than ever. The reality is, is that social media has become a hugely powerful, friendly interface to your customer base – it’s the icing on the top of the marketing cake if you like. But people don’t just want icing, they want some cake, some substance – which is why it’s so important for companies to look at developing sophisticated content strategies which will be search engine-friendly and generate leads.

Social media without solid professional content behind it doesn’t work all that well. Just as well, then, that we’re very good at making cakes here as well as a dab hand at icing!

Contact us now on 0845 862 0017 or email us on hello@themediamarketingco.com and find out how we can help you market your brand effectively online or join our mailing list and get regularly tips and information straight into your mailbox.

Leading money-saving website www.discountvouchers.co.uk
has launched a Facebook campaign to help raise funds for Sport Relief, with the company offering to donate 10p for every new Facebook fan signed up by midnight 21st March 2010 – up to a maximum of £50,000.

Anyone can become a Facebook fan by going to the DiscountVouchers.co.uk
Facebook page  and will then receive news on the latest money-saving offers
and vouchers from DiscountVouchers.co.uk, which offers deals on a wide
range of companies, including lastminute.com, Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Sky,
Argos, First Choice and many more.

Simon Terry, Managing Director of DiscountVouchers.co.uk, says: “Sport
Relief is a fantastic cause and we are willing to donate up to £50,000 to
aid the charity. However, it is up to the public how much we spend – the
more people who become fans, the money we will donate!

“Becoming a Facebook fan now has a double incentive, with anyone
registered being amongst the first to receive news of the latest
money-saving offers, plus up until midnight on Sunday, registering ensures
that we will donate even more money to Sport Relief.”

Anyone wanting to become a Facebook fan can do so by visiting
http://www.facebook.com/DiscVisc?v=wall&ref=ts#!/DiscVisc?v=wall&ref=ts.

At The Media Marketing Co offices we do like to take a breeze through the ‘papers’, well hundreds of websites actually, on a daily basis.

And as we predicted, a number of stories are cropping up on a weekly basis (it will be daily soon) about large companies (Vodafone is one that has been mentioned this week) that are running into trouble with their Social Media campaigns (a member of staff put up a rude Tweet).

Today we see that lawyers are warning employers that they must take a more serious attitude towards Social Media as it is now such a powerful tool, the damage caused by unapproved activity that is directly linked to a company name, can be very serious.  The Tory party have twigged this and all prospective candidates in the forthcoming election must have SM messages approved by head office.

We urge all our clients to treat Social Media messages as though they were mini press releases, and tweeting etc must be carried out by approved personnel who are aware of the marketing and branding objectives of the company.

As the lawyers are warning, the consequences can be serious.

Twitter is the most popular of the leading social community networks (SCNs) and interactive sites for online PR, according to a new survey of 107 PR professionals.

It narrowly beats YouTube, in second place, and Facebook, in third, as a
preferred online PR tool.

But the survey, conducted by New Venture Publishing for its new Perfect
Online PR Masterclass, finds that no SCNs or interactive sites are yet
rated as very important for PR use.

On a scale of one (not important) to five (very important) the PR pros
rated top-ranking Twitter at an average of only 2.96.

YouTube scored 2.88 and Facebook 2.73. LinkedIn was on 2.4, Flickr on 2.1,
MySpace on 1.76, Bebo on 1.67 and MSN Messenger on 1.59. Ecademy on 1.53
and Xanga on 1.47 brought up the rear.

Overall, the PR pros rated “making use of social community networks” as
only thirteenth out of fourteen possible online PR priorities for the
future. It came behind front-ranking issues such as “integrating online
with other PR activity” and “developing online PR expertise
in-house”.

Many rumours have been flooding the social media streams over the past few weeks about the possibility of Twitter business pages and verified business accounts.

Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter, confirmed that they are to ‘start charging companies for using the platform from next year’ according to The Telegraph.

The new paid business accounts will allow businesses to have feedback areas and also in built statistics.

Biz Stone commented “”This takes advantage of some of the commercial use of Twitter we’ve seen from businesses like airlines and big box stores.  We want to present to them a layer of features that allows them to become better at Twitter, show them some of the analytics.”