Page 35 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

power. Statistically, we know that consumers are now more likely to depend on
each other for advice and information than they are on the corporations that are
marketing to them.

With consumers who are even more connected to each other through social media
than before, it has gotten easier for them to reach out to one another for that
advice. That means that when they see a piece of direct mail, they’re less likely to
depend on it. They’d rather go online and ask a friend for advice or search for a
product online than look at that flyer in the mail. And as marketers harness social
media marketing tactics more, it could see further drops.

There’s another side to the story, though. The more data that you can capture
about your customers through social media marketing tactics, the more opportu-
nities you have to feed your direct mail database. That’s just a factor of consumers
doing more online, sharing more of themselves, and opting into direct mail efforts
in exchange for information or acceptance into an online community. Your data-
base may get richer with social media marketing in the mix, but the value of it
may decrease — although that doesn’t mean that you can’t use direct mail as a
starting point to jump-start an online community, sustain interest in it, or reward
participation through mailing coupons. The solution? Think about how you collect
information about your consumers differently and, more important, how you
share information back to them. It doesn’t have to only be via mail or only via
social media; knowing when to use what form of communication is key. More on
this in later chapters.

Public relations

Among the earliest proponents of social media were digital-savvy public relations
experts. Many of them entered this space by treating social media just as they
have treated the mainstream media. These professionals equated buzz (how much
people talk about a specific product or brand) in the social media realm with press
mentions in the mainstream media. These PR experts identified the influential
(influence defined as those having the most reach) bloggers and tweeters and
started showering them with the same kind of attention that they had been
bestowing on the mainstream media. They sent them press releases in advance,
offered exclusive interviews, invited them to dinners, commented on their blogs,
and carefully tracked how much their brands were mentioned and how
positively.

For PR professionals, this approach made perfect sense. Arguably, they recognized
early on how powerful social media could be and were among the first to track
brand mentions and participate in conversations. In fact, many of the social media
experts today are former public relations professionals who’ve taken the time to
understand how social media works and how they can leverage it to support a

CHAPTER 1 Understanding Social Media Marketing 19