Integrating Social Media Into Your Business

 

 

This article from eMarketer, while in many ways spot on, may indeed be missing the point entirely. We have spent the past two and a half years meeting with marketers about integrating social media into their marketing plans and find the consistent factor is time. Every year management expect marketers to do more with less. And in "normal" times that may make sense (although I could argue that), but when a whole new way of marketing emerges, the marketing department has to have the resources to understand those changes. In 2011 most of the marketers we met with were so swamped with "traditional" marketing issues they could not possibly take the time to integrate social media - hell, most hardly understood exactly what is going on in this complicated space. Whether it is contracted or on-staff, every marketing department must invest some resources in social media in 2012. Management must allocate some budget, even if the initiatives "fail", there is much to learn. Waiting to let others learn the lessons could leave a brand so far behind in the category that it will take 10 times the investment to catch up.

 

Start simple, but start.

 

Your website is probably a good place to start. If your website is still simply "brochureware", designed to be an online brochure for your Company, you might want to call in a good web strategist to write a 3 year digital vision (any more than that is impossible to project) that will serve the Company's overall needs and begin to have marketing taking in as much communication as they put out. Your website should now be the centre of your business - we call it the hub. It can still include elements of your brochure, but your site should be organized by your keywords as that determines which "door" a propsect enters your site.

 

 

Your digital strategy should start with your website and will inevitably lead you into social media. Jumping in the water before you learn to swim is a risky proposition. Some of us learn that way. Others drown.

 

Bottom line: allocate some resources and give your marketing professionals a little time to think and learn about digital marketing so they can integrate it into your business.