Fusing the Age of Social Media with Marketing Principles

I bookmarked a good article on how to evolve marketing by fusing web 2.0 with sound marketing principles. Besides the very obvious plug for SilverPop, the article is has some good suggestions. Some of the better ones I have some comments on:

1. Speak from a place of service - Rather than blatant self promotion. Sounds obvious, but too many people don't get it. If you are using your blog or twitter account to spam thousands of people while trying to build awareness, you are shooting yourself in the foot. Especially on twitter, the best way to build your followers is to publish frequent, valuable content. People find you through feeds and if your tweets have value, you'll get followed. Further, using twitter's content search, people will find you through relevant information you publish on topics they are interested in. You can't splatter your name or your brand all over social media without adding value.

2. Cross-link all of your profiles and social groups. Common sense and I discussed it in my last two blog posts on linking and building a search profile on our StepRep blog. Don't forget to list these profiles, blogs and don't forget about your email footers and other marketing materials.

3. While I noted the obvious plug for SilverPop, I don't think this is a bad product. A more important point here is to clarify what viral should mean. Viral marketing is not trying to produce a video that is soo crazy millions of people are going to share it. A viral product is one that naturally spreads when it is used. Rather, the use of the product spreads it. While SP makes it easier for email messages to spread, an overall focus should be on trying to create something that is spread through it's practical use.

4. Lastly, the point on exclusivity is a good one. If you have several profiles that you are actively trying to promote and build, you have to make the content on them somewhat unique. Sounds simple but it multiplies the workload.

(Oh, and I had to comment - I liked the title of the article ;-) Catchy)

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