Here is a follow through to the post I did on Is Social Media a Fad?
Marketing though social media has three important aspects:
1. Creating buzz or news worthy events, videos, tweets, or even blog entries that attract attention, and become viral in nature. Buzz is the piece that makes social media marketing work, it replicates a message not through purchase of an ad, but through user to user contact.
2. Building ways that fans of a brand or company can promote it themselves in multiple online social media venues. Fan pages in Twitter, MySpace of Facebook are exactly this.
3. It is conversational. Social media marketing is not fully controlled by the organization, it allows for user participation and dialogue. Potentially a badly designed social media marketing campaign can backfire on the organization that created it. That is the reason that SMM campaigns must fully engage and respect the users.
Yes we understand the concept that Social Media is not just creating buzz or hype its actually creating a platform for brands to converse with their consumers and vice versa, but the ultimate question really is what do this brands get our of their investment. Some companies now hire social media specialists and allotted their budgets to social media efforts, but how do you know that it is effective? Is there a return in investment?
Here is a link that might be helpful : 100 Ways To Measure Social Media
This video showcases several Social Media ROI examples along with other effective Social Media Strategies.
