Social Media impacts much more than Marketing

Most people describe this Web Strategy Blog as being marketing focused, but in reality, the scope is much larger, it’s just that social media hasn’t made a big enough impact compared to marketing for people to notice.

Social media impacted the PR industry first, to them, it was the most disruptive. Corporate marketers quickly followed suit, and now it’s even impacting other areas of corporate marketing.

Social Media impacts all areas of communication, not just marketing, be prepared for it to evolve product development, support, employee communication, partners, and even influence competition.

Here’s how it’s going to play out, I hope you’re ready:

Marketing
I’ve written enough about the impacts of social media to these groups: Analysts, Press, Media, Prospects, and Customers. Read the community marketing archives, social media archives, or use the search bar on the right column to find posts.

Product Development
Build better products by connecting direct users with the product team, stop guessing at what features to build and fix when the audience can work directly with you. I realize this is hard for many product managers to give up, but like with everything start small and build up to it. Case Studies include Threadless, and Dell’s Ideastorm. At my previous role as an online community manager I would forward product feedback directly to product teams. I currently support customers as rapidly as possible here in my current role.

Product Support
This can actually equate in cost savings, so quantify. Users can self-support each other by answering each others’ questions. Use tools such as forums, social networking tools, and wikis. I highly recommend you consider it be public, but require login and manage by monitoring and gleaming intelligence. If customer has a severe issue, quickly escalate internally. It’s hard to keep product managers from wanting to answer all the questions, but if you let the community build up a knowledge base the product team can gain intelligence. I did this at my previous company with online forums, it cost $4 a week, and I set up a global watch force around the clock. Also see why the company Satisfaction may be a disruption to this market.

Employees
The Intranet is a strong area of focus in my career, I’ve been involved with four enterprise intranets, and have been the manager of two. The opportunity for your internal army to collectively come together and offer solutions, share, and become more effective should be part of the core strategy from the CEO on down. Sadly, many of the legacy CMS tools that were deployed on mulit-million dollar budgets are antiquated and lack social features. I wrote a white paper on Why IT departments an business groups should work together, I started this paper way back in 2005 (published 2006), I guess I was a little ahead of the curve. If your IT department doesn’t support the changes that are happening on the web, employees will naturally find tools available on the open web, thus causing lack of control for IT. IT must adapt and evolve quickly.

Partners
Increased communication and reduction of time, process and cost can occur when vendors and partners are effectively communicating with each other. Tools such as blogs, podcast, can be used to help a reseller to promote a vendor’s content. Collaboration tools of every flavor are available to increase a variety of communications, strengthen those relationships using the web.

Competitors
Intelligence gathering of your competitors is so much easier now with the live and social web. At my previous company, I setup google alerts about my competitors products, executives, and brand. Whenever someone would talk about my competitor, I saw it, told the right people, and would sometimes engage. Remember that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, and that the friend of your enemy should also be your friend, web tools make that easy to do.

Online advertising continues to grow, mainstream media bleeding (42% online vs -3% traditonal)

THe Internet Outsider demonstrates the formula most of us have already figured out, the web is causing a shift in advertising dollars (although not the most important attribute, but a key indicator to what’s changing)

“US advertising revenue at 4 big online media companies–Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), AOL (TWX), and MSN (MSFT)–grew by $1.3 billion in Q2, or 42%.

US advertising revenue at 15 big television, newspaper, magazine, radio, and outdoor companies (Time Warner, Viacom, CBS, etc.) shrank by $280 million in Q2, or 3%.”

42% online vs -3% traditional
Read the bottom line on this spreadsheet analysis. Google is growing hand over fist at 96% while NYT has a decrease by 6%.

Quite interesting that mainstream media would suggest that other factors were to blame such as the “real estate market” or “cyclical weakness.” Take a step back, look at how your kids are communicating, and see the forest.

When is the tipping point of advertising dollars being heavier online than on mainstream media? Collective research indicates 2011.

Costs and Benefits of Search Engine Optimization

I know one of the top SEO consultants in the United States, he confided that he makes up to $500 an hour for his service, and clients are paying for it. The return? A website that is easier to find in Google and other search engine results. Previously, there has been challenges to this emerging industry, and the SEO industry stood back up and declared legitmacy.

I realize the benefits of being found quickly and easily through keywords that you’re tied to, I watch my logs and am able to see which keywords are yielding new visitors.

Oh, and if your corporation is launching a new product, I highly recommend you buy the keywords associated with the product, or optimize your product and get it crawled quickly. Why? Because at my previous company, when our competitor launched a new product, we blogged about it, and was in the top search results –above the competitor.

Where should you put your dollars? Paid or organic? At this session, I learned the most effective campaigns use a combination of both.

Not sure what to pay? read this report on SEO Pricing & Costs – What Should You Charge / How Much Should You Pay?

Neil Patel or Pronet Advertising has been helping me optimize my site, he’s shown me how to look at incoming keyword traffic and how to match and optimize my site to achieve maximum results. If you’ve questions, his blog is a good place to start.

A Checklist: Before you select that White Label Social Networking Site

Questions to answer before contacting any White Label Social Networking site (feel free to add additional checkoff points below)

1) What business problem are you trying to fix? What’s broken? What does success look like (without mentioning features)

2) There are different tools for different problems, Are you sure a Social Networking site will fix this?

3) Where are your community/market/users currently?

4) Not sure? Then look again, don’t proceed farther until you find them.

5) Have you considered joining that community before creating your own? You know of the Walmart 10 week fiasco right? Trying to recreate MySpace doesn’t make sense because it already exists.

6) How open/closed to you want your community? Think about long term, does it scale?

7) What incentive are you creating with this SoNet that will drive users to your site and share?

I’m a big believer in using my blog (a one to many communication tool) to make my life efficient, so I may refer you to this post in request.

Consultants please read
Are you a consultant that focuses on evaluating, choosing, and implementing a solution? I encourage you to leave a thoughtful comment below that adds additional knowledge that will showcase and impress others, please no raw pitches. Perhaps add some addition points a buyer should look for.