We’re moving into an age of online marketing that’s got the advertising world and business owners turned on their heads. The concept of social media is completely foreign to so many business owners and marketers that only have one response to direct engagement with consumers:

“Derp?”

Companies that do get involved with social media are not only seeing massive success but they’re building authority within their niche. From that authority and credibility is the cornerstone of amassing traffic and increasing your conversions.

The success within social media marketing is having a profound impact on traffic and sales for those companies that dove in and made the first cannonball.

As others begin to follow suit, consumers are doing the same. The realization that businesses are embracing sites like Facebook has made people begin to clamor for these sites. It’s also the reason why less engaging sites like the new Digg and other bookmarking sites are starting to teeter and may begin to falter in the wake of the social media explosion.

Consumers are becoming evangelists for brands, spreading the word on content being promoted, value being listed, coupons and discounts being given.

Some consumers are simply spreading the word for the sake of talking about a brand they love without getting anything in return.

Now, I could sit down and likely write an entire eBook on social media marketing with all the information and guidance that some businesses need. There’s a lot of data out there, a lot of case studied and success stories, tips and tricks, etc. It’s far too much to compile in one post and my soap box doesn’t support my weight that long.

What I will say is that as a business owner or marketer, you must always go where your costumers are. With that said, consider the fact that if Facebook were a nation, it would be considered the 3^rd largest country in the world by population along. Twitter is fast on its heels.

With that many people, you can guarantee that you’ve got customers and prospective clients in there somewhere. Can you afford not to get involved?

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A debate still rages out on the light-speed highway of the internet: should social media be handled in-house or outsourced to agencies? To this point there is no concrete, black-and-white answer, but there is plenty of information on both sides that can help you understand the difference and make an educated decision for yourself and your organization.

Part of the problem is the multifaceted nature of social media. The question seems to be directly focused on the social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. There is so much more to social media, however, such as Forums, RSS feeds, and so on. The potential to generate traffic on more than one social media source is truly astonishing, so it is important to never neglect them.

In general, there are three areas that the outsource vs. in-house question applies to, and your particular situation can help dictate how you react to each of them.

Managing the Community:

When most managers ask the above question, this is likely what they are referring to. Maintaining the online reputation of the organization using the company blog, Facebook fan page, Twitter accounts, etc. is what managing the community is all about. Most solutions to this problem fall into one of three broad groups:

1. Completely In-House: In most cases this situation is ideal. There are more than a few companies that take the digital and social cultures seriously and invest internal resources into maintaining their online presence. This sends a message to the world stating that they are hands-on about promoting their products while informing people who are interested in their products.

2. 50-50 Split: Sometimes, the personnel structure, or even the way that information is handled within the company simply makes a full time in-house team impossible. The marketing or PR division usually dedicates a community manager that has full knowledge of the brand to work with an agency to generate the online presence. The agency’s input coupled with the manager’s expertise creates a solution that is as close to in-house as possible.

3. Wholly Outsourced: While many companies are eager to share what they want to establish for themselves in the online world, participating in the organization and broad structure of the online campaign, there are others who are still of the opinion that the internet is some kind of fad. They don’t grasp the power of social media, and as such could care less if some unpaid intern at a social media agency was the voice of their company online. Unless that intern is some kind of marketing genius, the results are probably going to be less than pleasing.

Creative Development

Marketing 101 taught us that a brand needs to gain recognition before it can be trusted. Creative development is the process of getting the brand noticed, creating conversation starters that propel the product or service offered to the mainstream consciousness. Many marketing departments today create all kinds of plans for television and print advertisements while neglecting the power of the social media to drive their brand. If there is no plan in-house for developing the internet presence of the company, an agency is highly advised.

Measuring, Monitoring, and Reporting

This area is again, a matter of preference really. Whether there is someone on the payroll whose tasks revolve around keeping their eyes on the numbers, or the organization pays for the service like any other research brief, there is no predominant reason to choose one over the other.

In the end, our success hinges on our adaptability. We must learn to recognize when an approach isn’t working, and modify the plan accordingly. If you are beginning to question your results, maybe you should re-evaluate your methods.

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After watching the social media marketing field for as long as I have, it is frustrating to see that many car dealerships are having the exact same problems they had with the internet 10-15 years ago today with social media. Social media has become one of the fastest ways to spread word of mouth advertising, but so many companies (I’m picking on car dealerships because there seems to be so many of them with the same problems) are just failing to completely utilize the new tools they have available.

It isn’t the manufacturer’s fault. Almost every major car producer in the world has a competent, sound social media presence. It seems to be the local guys that don’t have a huge corporate structure that are struggling most with the issue of why they even need a Facebook page in the first place.

“I could just hire in some kid from the street to do this job,” they say, “or my nephew that spends 18 hours a day hooked to his computer, why do I need an expert in social media?”

The reason is that it takes a whole lot more know how than just putting up a Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc. account and watch the money roll in. Running a successful social media marketing campaign means sticking to the main principles of what older people would call a marketing strategy.

The landscape just isn’t the same as when a lot of businesses need a new “internet manager.” Usually it was just somebody from the sales team that liked computers and new enough about the internet to keep the company from sinking. By hiring from within like this, it is likely that those businesses missed out on real opportunities to increase their market share. Utilizing social media takes much more understanding of not just the tools, but also marketing itself.

Many managers just don’t know how to properly integrate the social media network into their already existing advertising campaign. They trust the reputation they have as established businesses to attract business. This last recession showed a lot of us that without a good back up for your marketing, it is really easy to go under in a difficult time.

And that is another reason that the local dealership is slow to take on the social media experience. They are suffering from a lack of income, so why invest in a new employee that is an expert in something that the manger probably has nothing but contempt for? The simple answer is that the companies that are integrating well into the social media networks are showing not only sustainability, but also growth in an age where loss is the norm.

Complicating the issue, most dealerships are still reeling from the financial hits taken by their business during the last 18 months; so finding ways to stretch their dollars is a high priority. Unfortunately their inability to see the potential results combined with their tight purse strings will cause many to miss the advantages associated with getting on board early and distancing themselves from the pack.

If a car dealership wants to be a real innovator, they have to take that leap of faith and hire a competent, patient social media marketing consultant that will keep those dealership doors from closing for good.

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With all the research being done around marketing online and how people use the web, it’s come to light that people just don’t trust corporations as much as they used to, especially not with the way that most companies have managed to smear themselves and sacrifice credibility for a quick buck. So who do they trust?

Well, honestly – people like me.

It’s not the hair, although I have to admit that my machismo gets the best of me sometimes. No, it’s the authority that comes from blogging.

Some have said that within the realm of social media, people don’t generally trust bloggers, however research into that area has shown otherwise. I don’t particularly go for the assertion that bloggers have no authority. I agree that the category of “bloggers” as a whole isn’t necessarily trusted but there are plenty of people who come to specifically trust and form relationships with bloggers and their blogs.

eMarketer did a recent study that clearly demonstrated what I’m talking about. Their study “what makes social media trustworthy” looked into which sources of information are most and least trusted by the average user:

Consider the percentages in this image. 30% or less actually trust brands, products and companies based on participation within Twitter and other communities and less than 40% trust brands on Facebook. Remarkable, over 60% trust blog posts from an individual that they know or have come to know through blogging.

What does this mean for someone who is involved in marketing? It means you and your company need to step out from behind the corporate logo, stop drawing lines in the sand and establish a real presence through blogging. Whether you do it on your own, outsource it, or let your employees develop a voice through blogs you need to do something.

It need to be apparent to customers that there are real people within a company that have real opinions that aren’t being glazed over or astro-turfed. You should be willing to let the employees that work for you represent your brand in a productive, authentic way that matters to the people you’re targeting.

Honestly, it’s more about what you do and what you say than where you’re participating. It doesn’t matter where you hold the conference, as long as what you’re saying to the people that are gathering provides value – the type of value they’re looking for.

People want the opportunity for a two way dialogue, they have very little interest in being talked “at”. One-way messages from any brand have far less impact than an engaging situation where the individual has a chance to actually be heard in the middle of a conversation. They don’t just want a place to vent, that’s only a small portion of the population that can’t control their tongue.

This is how real people speak – in dialogue. Blogging allows just that, and here is proof that it’s effective.

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I recently produced a post regarding Twitter being in its death throws and received a query from one of my readers on it:

Thanks for your thoughts on Twitter. I am interested in where you think those who have found Twitter useful in the past might migrate to. Forums and blogs are invaluable sources of interacting with like minded marketers, but where do you think things are trending, if ultimately away from Twitter?

Which is a great question.  Let me recap just a little bit.  In the previous article I talked about how Twitter had its uses but in my opinion those are a bit limited.  I think the usefulness of Twitter isn’t to any specific form of contact or method of engagement.  I think it’s very dynamic, as social media tends to be, because we’re dealing with people and growing communities.  That kind of thing is very fluid, without any solid form or color.  That means that like all things, what works for one won’t work for another.  Twitter has a lot of limitations that are being clouded in a lot of hype right now, however it’s still working to some degree for a few primary purposes.

Twitter is a useful tool for listening, as long as you know how to tune out the noise.  Companies like Ford have social media customer service agents that scour the web in places like Twitter and other social media networks looking for dissatisfied customers that they can reach out to.

For anyone who is trying to reach out and touch someone (minds out of the gutter people) then any social network can be effective as long as you’re managing the engagement properly.  The problem with Twitter is that among the select few who are actively hunting for specific people, there are a LOT of people who are running around the party speaking gibberish and just making noise.  It’s a room filled to the brim with talking heads, yes-men and parrots.

Where do I see people migrating to as the novelty wears off?  My initial reaction is to simply spit back “Facebook”, but then they aren’t really moving away from Twitter and moving toward Facebook - most people are already on Facebook.  It’s the social media giant with by the far the largest number of users hands down.  If you combined the user counts of Myspace, Twitter and LinkedIn you still wouldn’t hit the total user count on Facebook.

And that’s assuming you account for all the fake profiles.

I predict that Facebook is going to continue to improve on an already solid network for businesses.  Thus far they’ve done a fairly good job at giving businesses of any size a place to establish a face and personality, with a unique method of engagement that puts a company on the same level as the people.  Through the profile pages of businesses, consumers now have an outlet to like, enjoy and interact with a brand that they support.  Likewise, those who don’t like a particular brand can throw eggs all they like.

Facebook offers far more potential, but that’s not saying that it’s the end all be all of social media marketing either.  For every Goliath, there is a David.  I highly doubt that our David is going to be Twitter.  Google has tried and failed (a few times).  Until one comes along, Facebook will continue to be the go to place.

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