Rob Birgfeld, SmartBrief

By Rob Birgfeld

My mom has a Facebook page and a Twitter habit. I've been handed business cards with titles like "director of conversation," and Fortune 500 companies including Coca-Cola now have "chief bloggers." It is safe to say that social media has effectively gone mainstream. The next question is: Have mainstream marketers effectively gone social media?

As social media has migrated from the basement to the boardroom, marketing and advertising practitioners are grappling with a strange inversion. It used to be that strong advertising campaigns relied on message discipline and control.

Great Message + Right Reach + Sufficient Frequency = Strong Results

That simple formula doesn't necessarily work in the context of social media. To successfully promote a specific product, service, company, or brand in this brave new world, most marketers face a fundamental paradox: one must cede control to gain access.

SmartBrief is a network of more than 100 b-to-b online newsletters, including SmartBrief on Social Media, an online newsletter and blog dedicated to making "social media" work in the real world. As part of the SmartBrief team, I get to see on a daily basis what's working and what's not in this space. Our company is also fortunate to work with many of the world's leading brand advertisers - from Fortune 500 firms like IBM, Pfizer, and SAP to fast-growing industry leaders. I'm happy to report that while social media marketing and traditional marketing aren't interchangeable, many of the basic rules of good advertising and marketing still apply.

Here are a few of what many people call "best practices" — but what we think are plain-old common sense approaches that can help you capitalize on the opportunities that social media brings.

Common Sense Tip #1: People Are Talking, So You Should Listen
You're not pushing a message as much as participating in a conversation. Social Media is the new type of "focus group." Marketers can track conversation and monitor discussions on social networks, message boards, blogs, and in real-time on Twitter. There is no better feedback than that offered by customers — especially when it is truly social in nature. The caveat here, of course, is that you can't control for self-selection bias as easily with social media or open/viral/public feedback mechanisms as you can with a traditional market research and invite-only focus groups.

However, by participating in ongoing conversations about your company, brand, or product, you're engaging an engaged audience - which makes spreading the word and targeting a motivated audience that much easier. So before launching your next campaign, whether it's online or offline, social media is a perfect test bed. Which marketing message works with your customer base? Which message will catch viral fire and compel likeminded consumers to become interested and potential new customers?

Common Sense Tip #2: Engage
So we've identified the usefulness of the conversations in social media. What next? If you're responsible for brand marketing, it's time for you to engage. Comcast, Dell, Intuit, and Ford have seen tremendous success with customers via Twitter because they have created a dialogue. Marketing in social media spaces can only succeed if the customers can trust the voice of the brand — and that requires a good ear and a level of sincerity that makes some uncomfortable. Those who have succeeded in the space have listened, responded, and acted on what their market is looking for — passing along valuable information to the executive suite. Not only are products and services better for the input, but the customer is empowered and will tell everyone who will listen.

One key engagement decision to consider is: Who has control of your "online voice"? Certain celebrated online brands like Zappos (the billion dollar, online shoe selling darling and recent addition to Fortune's Top 100 companies to work for in 2009) encourage all employees to represent the brand in social media venues from Facebook to Twitter and beyond. Other brands locate their social media voice within a more traditional silo — creating specific positions within the PR/Marketing department.

Common Sense Tip #3: Message Discipline Zero, Message Authenticity 1
In the battle for online hearts and minds, traditional "message discipline" will lose out to authenticity every time. The social media universe isn't a place for boilerplate marketing collateral or regurgitation of a company line. Marketers have to respect the norms of space to be taken seriously.

Be real or, as one pundit put it in describing what he considers the 10 commandments of social media: "Be true to yourself, your company, and your audience. Don't overhype or oversell your products or services. Never deceive your audience with false promises or overblown statements. Never underestimate the ability of your audience to sniff out garbage."

Common Sense Tip #4: You Don't Need to Be Everywhere and do Everything; Target Effectively and Responsibly
This should be intuitive for seasoned marketers. Social media platforms, applications, and communication are blossoming all around us. In the past six months, more than 10,000 new applications for iPhones have been released. That's more than 2 new apps per hour, every hour of every day. Marketers can easily get distracted — building apps, widgets, profiles for the myriad social networks that have sprung forth in a rush to "Web 2.0" glory. Don't be distracted. Identify your spots by taking advantage of new opportunities for market segmentation. Mix traditional platforms with new applications and forums to reach the prospective customers you need to meet your goals.

The basics of return on investment (ROI) still apply, even as the medium changes. This is where SmartBrief lives - at the intersection of two million highly engaged and high-level subscribers organized by industry affinity, interest, and level of responsibility. We often partner with leading associations to produce the right marketing context for our clients and make sure our sponsors and advertisers can reach the audience they need — via e-mail, wireless device, BlackBerry — by e-mail, blog, Web, or widget. We work with our advertising and marketing clients to both understand who we can reach and what we can measure. Clients such as IBM have found value in putting their industry-specific marketing messages in highly targeted, industry-specific online briefs.

In this regard, some smart marketing rules are always applicable. Just ask Christine MacDonald, an IBM marketer focused on "the mid market" segment. "Our marketing has to be executed in a trackable media, so that we can report on responses, leads, and wins, demonstrating a strong ROI for each campaign tactic," MacDonald told SmartBrief in a recent case study on online marketing. "SmartBrief has become an important part of that equation. Its audience is made up of association members, so we can communicate our offerings to retailers versus educators, consultants, or competitors. We can be granular by industry segment and effectively reach the decision-making c-level with our offers."

In other words, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Rob Birgfeld is the director of audience development at SmartBrief, an online media company and news aggregator that partners with leading trade associations to publish more than 100 b-to-b online news briefs. SmartBrief advertisers rank among the world's leading brands across 20 key industries.