Business owners are in a unique position of PR and marketing with the popularity of social media creating an entirely new map to consider. Multi-channel marketing now includes online social media as a channel that is relevant to branding and selling. As more marketers have realized the potential that social media holds, there has been a social networking push in corporate and business marketing. 

So why are so many businesses giving up or failing at their social media marketing attempts?

Many businesses enter social media with the anticipation of immediate results, and a misunderstanding of the true ROI and how social networking effects business strategy.

Social media marketing is not instant, it is not a strategy to implement this week and anticipate huge shifts in the metrics next week. It takes time, focused effort and a clear view of how social media fits into your overall business strategy. 

The primary mistake that many business owners are making is to consider social media as a sales cycle. It is NOT a sales cycle. It is a Social Media Ecology and Engagement Lifecycle.  What is the difference?

An ecology lifecycle takes into account the full landscape of your business, the communities involved in your business and the interaction between those communities. It is the lifecycle of interaction that takes place within and between your networks and business.

Do not lock your business into the mindset of seeing your social profiles as part of a sales cycle or strategy, because if you do you will become frustrated and throw in the social towel before the real mojo starts to brew.

The bottom line is that it’s going to take time to build a successful social media strategy, and time for the full social media ecology and engagement lifecycle to unfold.  This means that you must set aside some time every day to check your social profiles, your blogs and your networks in general. Take the time to approve your comments, answer questions and engage your community.

How much time should you set aside for your social strategy? That depends on the shape, scope and size of your Business Keyword DNA and your current time constraints. It may be more effective for you to hire an expert and allow them to manage your networks and increase engagement. It’s far better to pay someone to manage your network, than it is to try to do it yourself half-heartedly.

Remember that as long as you are creating powerful content, offering your community value through the four types of interaction and following the ecological mindset, you will develop your brand every day that you spend on social media.

Your ROI will come, and like any endeavor, the effort of intention and energy that you place into your social value, will be the ROI that you convert to cash value later on.

Erika Preuss for Corp. Social Networking
and Technology Goddess

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If your company does not have a social media presence online, you are missing out on the 93% of Americans who believe you should, and the 85% of Americans who are expecting to interact with your company through social media, according to a new research study from Cone.

The 2008 Business in Social Media Study should shatter any doubts whether corporate social media interaction is necessary, revealing that 60% of Americans are now interacting with companies using social media and one in four are interacting more than once a week.

Customer satisfaction is also now proven to be higher for businesses with a social media presence as the study reveals that 56% of consumers feel a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they interact through social media.

Mike Hollywood, director of new media for Cone commented on the study results. “The news here is that Americans are eager to deepen their brand relationships through social media. It isn’t an intrusion into their lives, but rather a welcome channel for discussion.”

More numbers from the Cone study reveal that Consumers believe:

• Companies should use social networks to solve their problems (43%).
• Companies should solicit feedback on their products and services (41%) via social media.
• Companies should develop new ways for consumers to interact with their brand (37%) through social media.
• Companies should market to consumers (25%) using social media.

The Cone study was conducted online September 11-12 2008 and surveyed 1,092 adults. 

It also showed that the most lucrative higher-income households are expecting social media interaction with companies they do business with. Households with incomes of $75K+ believe that companies should seek to reach them via social media and two-thirds of the wealthiest households say they feel a stronger connection to brands they can interact with online.

What does this mean for your business?

It means that in the hearts and minds of your consumers, social media has gone beyond being a marketing option, and is now considered a marketing necessity.

They are expecting you to be present in social networking communities, to interact with, listen to and engage them in meaningful conversations, and yes, they are also expecting you to market to them there.

Are you going to say “no” to the 93% of consumers expecting you to join the conversation?

Erika Preuss
Corp. Social Networking
Technology Goddess

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Leveraging your social media strategy for maximum ROI  is boosted by your ability to create deep engagement and creative experience for your users, combined with understanding the lifecycles in your Social Media Ecology.

What is Social Media Ecology?

Social Media Ecology is the lifecycle of interaction that takes place within each social network you leverage, and seeing your social networks as global ecological cultures.

Ecology lifecycles in nature are usually defined in science class as the interactions between organisms and their natural environment.

Ecology lifecycles in Social Media include the total interactions (engagement) between you, your community members in the network and that engagement interaction lifecycle.

The interaction lifecycle between your business and the community is comprised of four actions:

• Engage
• Listen
• Interact
• Measure

Let’s take a closer look at engagement in the interaction lifecycle.

Engage

One of the challenges in social media marketing is the ability to leverage engagement effectively. First, you must develop value through content that is interesting, immersive, participatory and relevant to your story in order to earn your place in the ecological social web and join the conversations. If you want interactivity to work in your favor by deepening users emotional connection with your brand, then you must give them meaningful and engrossing experiences that register and are remembered.

The bottom line is that once you engage people, you must give to them, and the giving that happens upfront is proven to have the most powerful psychological effect in the community. Many marketers approach the “giving” to mean “free stuff”, and while we all know that the social value of free stuff works to grow your list and bring people on board, what keeps your community involved long-term is the engagement of giving real psychological and emotional value.

The deeper the psychological and emotional perceived value, the deeper your message and brand will anchor in the minds of your users.  How do you create a perceived psychological and emotional value? 

You create it through personal relationships.

Your engagement plan must get personal, building relationships with constant dialogue. Dialogue is a two-way street of communication, which  takes us to the next step in the interaction lifecycle: Listen.

Listen

Engaging and listening are closely related but there is a distinction between the two that give listening it’s own step in the lifecycle. Listening is an art, the art of being receptive to all the ways feedback and information comes to you from your communities.

While engagement and giving start the dialogue, asking questions, and then pausing and allowing the answers to happen will give you valuable social currency, and it’s a social currency that you can actually convert into market value. How?

By taking what you learn from skillful listening and applying it to your market intelligence knowledge, and then leveraging it to better target your audience.  Once you know what your audience needs, you can take the engagement to the next lifecycle step, interaction.

Interact

You have now successfully engaged your community, you have given meaningful value and taken the time to listen to what your users are saying through conversations, now it’s time to plan how you will interact with your communities by giving your users a unique meaningful and engrossing experience that is fully participatory. 

Interaction experiences are unique to the users you are engaging with, gone are the days of the “one size fits all” consumer experience and interaction with your brand.

In the web 2.0 world it’s more effective to base your interaction experience on the type of users who are engaging with you, and because you have listened you should now know who those users are, and can break down interaction experience into four main levels based on your users.

In the book “The Open Brand” by KellyMooney and Nita Rollins, recommended by Guy Kawasaki, the four types of interaction levels are based on the following user types:

On-Demand Experience and Interaction: These users want it all now, they seek knowledge, fast, and want full usability in your site or social profile’s features. Make sure your profiles clearly show your brand and make accessing all that great content you’ve uploaded easy to find.

Personal Experience and Interaction: The personal experience users crave relationship with you, and desire recognition and personalization. Give them human interaction, reward their loyalty and share targeted content with the feeling they are part of the “in” crowd by joining your network.

Engaging Experience and Interaction: Users who love engaging interaction are asking you to give them rich media, they want to be engrossed, enthralled, entertained and diverted from their normal routine. Make sure your social profile has media that is inspiring and emotional to your users. This might mean doing different videos for each social network, but if you have followed the lifecycle and listened to your audience you know what their needs are.

Networked Experience and Interaction: These users seek meaningful change and innovation, portability, self-expression and the power of community. Give them profile tools that are mashable, widgets and badges they can export to their own sites and interactive media.

Measure

Measuring your social networking effectiveness is a hot discussion topic in marketing circles. The bottom line is that there is an element of qualitative measurement that is more subtle and somewhat more difficult to measure.

You will want to combine both qualitative and quantitative measurement and analytics, monitoring social buzz, site and profile analytics, optimizing your widgets for the search engines and monitoring your conversions for effective ROI. I’ll be sharing more about social media monitoring in upcoming articles.

Putting it all together

You can be a great social networker, and a poor converter of social to market value if you do not understand how to put Social Media Ecology together into a workable strategy for your business.

If you are working way too hard on your social networking campaigns, and seeing few results, it’s time to step back and look at things from the ecological point of view and take the following actions:

1.  Zoom out to the big picture: Approach your global social network as a living ecology, a Social Media Ecology made up of many living cultures and social networks.

2.  Examine each culture closely and look at your interactions within that culture: Has it been effective? If not, how can you better fit the cultural community? Before you start a new community, make sure you know what you are getting into.

3.  Within each social network: Engage, Listen, Interact

4.  Measure: Measure each social network’s effectiveness in your marketing strategy, and measure your global effectiveness as well. This will help you identify where your engagement is having the most impact.

5.  Repeat the lifecycle: The interaction lifecycle is continuous, see it as a circle of life that cycles continuously in your Social Media Ecology.

In summary, your ROI can be improved in your social media marketing campaigns by seeing the big picture. Just as the Earth’s global ecology is a balance of life and elements, finding the correct ecological balance in your web 2.0 strategy will create an abundant and healthy business environment for your brand to grow.

Erika Preuss for Corp. Social Networking
and TechnologyGoddess.com

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Remember that old nursery rhyme: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” With social media, this old cliché is especially true.

Some of you may be afraid to start a social media campaign because you don’t want to open up the floodgates for negative comments to come pouring in. But, there’s no reason to be afraid of such negative feedback. Jacob Morgan says negative feedback can be a good thing.

I couldn’t agree more.

Negative feedback is priceless – as long as it’s constructive. A general “you suck” doesn’t provide much guidance, but if a potential customer leaves a comment that your Website is too complicated or your product is poorly made, your company can use this feedback to improve operations.

Think about it. Most major companies pay big bucks to conduct research. Focus groups, surveys and customer interviews can cost thousands of dollars and it can take a long time to get the results.

With social networks, it’s easy for your customers to leave feedback. Plus, since the Internet provides a degree of anonymity, customers are more likely to speak their mind. Which brings me to the point at hand . . . negative feedback can be the best feedback.

For example, if your company produces witty bumper stickers and you are trying to gain a buzz on Facebook, you would want to know if your target market thinks your bumper stickers are funny. If Johnny501 says your bumper stickers are lame and look cheap. Don’t curse Johnny501 under your breath and think he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Perhaps you should take the hint, generate fresh jokes and find a new graphic designer.

If you receive the same negative feedback from several people, take it seriously and make a change. Likewise, if you receive the same positive feedback from several people, you should keep doing what they like. Like they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

If you find that one person is being extremely negative without offering constructive criticism, you should contact them directly to see if there’s anything you can do to change their opinion. That way one loud naysayer won’t ruin your good reputation.

Negative feedback is generally a good way for you to test and prove how responsive you are to your customer’s needs. Are you ready for the challenge?

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This blog post has been repurposed from a previous entry at CharlesHeflin.com. In order to get these points across we feel it is helpful to explain things in different ways so the understanding becomes more clear.

What once seemed like a far-out, futuristic marketing strategy is now a reality. Today, a wide range of industries are increasingly using social media. But, as with many new business strategies, one major question keeps popping up:

How can we maximize the potential of social media?

In other words, how can we get the most “bang” for the buck with social media?

Measuring the effectiveness of a social media campaign can seem like a daunting task. But, after 2 years of extensive research, testing and execution of social media campaigns, we have developed some guidelines that can help you determine whether your organization is getting the maximum ROI from your social media campaigns.

We understand that no two companies are alike. Thus, no two social media campaigns are alike. That’s why developing a formula for measuring ROI for social media is so difficult. But, there are some common threads that run through most successful social media campaigns. After two years of extensive research, testing, observation and implementation we’ve been able to identify these common threads and generate 10 rules of thumb that will help you produce measurable ROI using social media.

So, without further ado, here are our 10 rules of thumb, what we call the Ten Social Media Commandments:

Commandment 1: Thou shall gain the trust of your audience.

The level of success of any social media campaign is directly proportional to your ability to gain the trust of your target audience. The faster you can gain the trust of your audience, the more effective your campaign will be. This is easier said than done, but it is crucial for a successful campaign. Keep in mind that trust has to be earned. It is never gained through a promotion of any sort. Return on investment comes through consistent and conscientious branding, search engine visibility and from providing clear and consistent information to customers seeking more information about your persona on a social media space. Being honest, giving and trustworthy is the sure-fire way to gain a loyal friend. The same rule applies to social media marketing.

Commandment 2: Thou shall not misuse social media networks for link love.

Using social media networks as a way to increase incoming links (link love) as a way to increase search engine rankings a short-lived and short-sighted strategy. Our research shows that search engines like Google are paying attention to the level of “community,” “friendship,” and “voting” that occurs within accounts that list your Web site link. This means that in order to rank high, you have to truly engage your audience in a mutual conversation instead of just generating links. Using social media black/grey hat tactics as a link building strategy will inevitably destroy your social media presence and reputation.

Commandment 3: Thou shall promote two-way communication.

Two-way communication is the mutual exchange of ideas, desires and needs between an organization and its target audience. Social media networks - like forums, blogs, micro-blogs and social networks – exist exclusively to foster two-way communication. In fact, two-way communication is so crucial to these social media networks that they would not exist without it. It is not enough to simply have a presence on these networks. You have to engage people, increase awareness of yourself and actively promote a dialogue between you (as a representative of your brand) and your audience. Plus, the feedback that comes from a true, two-way dialogue is priceless.

Commandment 4: Thou shall have educational, entertaining or enlightening content.

Your content must be useful or appealing. Thus, it should be one of the 3 E’s of social media engagement – educational, entertaining or enlightening. If your message does not fall into one of these 3 categories, you should rewrite. Interacting with your target audience should not be about shouting your message the loudest. It’s about providing a useful or enjoyable message.

Commandment 5: Thou shall unlearn old Internet marketing rules.

The old Internet marketing tactics of being the loudest or largest or highest ranked is no longer the key to success. To achieving a measurable ROI you need to engage your audience through communication that meets their needs and enables them to provide feedback. Thus, messages should follow the 3 E’s of social media engagement and your social media strategy should empower your audience to express their interests and needs.  Also, it’s important to consider the nature of your social network traffic conversion funnel (sales funnel) and not confuse it with traditional Internet marketing tactics.

Commandment 6: Thou shall follow the law of engagement in social networks.

More detail on this specific law will follow, but for now know that there are certain rules you must follow when using social media or you will be ripped to shreds.

Commandment 7: Thou shall empower your social network community.

If you empower your social media communities, you’ll receive good search engine visibility in return. It’s like karma. Only, this kind of karma removes focus from traditional SEO and places it firmly on community driven content delivery. In this way, SEO becomes automated through Crowdsourcing (Jeff Howe). Today, the rules of SEO have changed dramatically. “The New SEO” is a blend of traditional (technical) SEO and what I call social rankings. If you focus on building community trust, this will lead to crowdsourcing, which will lead to a dramatic increase in search engine visibility across all major search engines.

Commandment 8: Thou shall make your website interesting.

It’s one thing to engage an audience a social network, but if you want them to visit your blog (we recommend) or website, you should deliver what you promise. If you are successful at gaining the trust of your audience on a social network (by entertaining, educating or enlightening your audience) and they then visit your blog, you must continue delivering the same quality content. The way your blog (or website) to calls visitors to action is up to you, but generally providing a white paper, free reports or other information that is of high interest to your target audience will make your website a valuable resource. Plus, trust is maintained when your audience is educated, enlightened or entertained throughout the process.

Commandment 9: Thou shall listen to your audience.

You must listen to your target audience to determine their needs before engaging them. If not, they probably won’t find your campaign of much interest. Chris Brogan (and many others) recently drove this point home in a recent Twebinar. Others such as Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Groundswell repeat this point. If you listen to your audience, they will tell you what they want.

Commandment 10: Thou shall keep it real.

Be true to yourself, your company and your audience. Don’t over-hype or over-sell your products or services. Never deceive your audience with false promises or over-blown statements. Never underestimate the ability of your audience to sniff out garbage.

These are just a few of the tips we’ve found over the years. If you have a tip you’d like to add to our commandments please don’t hesitate to comment.

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In a recent blog post, James Duthie suggests that sex, permission marketing and social media were “The Ultimate Ménage à trois.” He argues that the same steps we use to attract a long term sexual partner are the same steps we should take to ensure a strong online relationship. He’s right.

Landing a date with the man or woman of your dreams is just the first step. Keeping the relationship going requires a lot more work.  Building any type of successful relationship requires a great deal of respect, patience, communication, reciprocity and persistence.

Whether you are wooing your soul mate or building a loyal customer base, it’s crucial to keep the fire going, to keep them coming back for more, to make them feel like they can’t live without you. Otherwise they will grow bored and find someone new to take care of their needs.

So, how do you keep the romance alive? Duthie’s tips are useful. It is important to:

1. Build trust and respect.
2. Listen.
3. Communicate regularly.
4. Give.
5. Avoid self promotion.

These tips will help build strong relationships, but here’s some more advice that can help you keep your relationships going strong – at home and online:

1. Remember the golden rule – Treat others as you want to be treated. Don’t ask more than you give. Don’t assume you know more than you do. Don’t force lopsided communication and don’t do things just to get something in return.
2. Don’t give up on romance – Once you’ve landed that hot date or generated a large customer base, don’t get lazy. Relationships are like plants, they need to be nurtured and fed. Continually provide special offers and favors to keep the relationship fresh.
3. Be spontaneous – Being too predictable leads to a boring relationship. Customers and partners can get restless if they feel like they can predict your every move. Mix things up so the relationship doesn’t get stale. If you typically communicate with your customers via email, chat with them on social networking sites. If your customers are used to receiving coupons, develop an online sweepstakes game.
4. Show them the love – If you appreciate your relationships, show it. Tell customers how much you appreciate them. Ask their opinion about how you can improve. Ask how you can help. Give them something they need. Chances are, if you show them the love, they’ll love you back.
5. Be patient – Relationships are delicate things. They constantly change and grow. If you don’t see the results you want today, you may tomorrow. You can’t force someone to love you no matter how hard you try. The best things in life take time, patience and attention. Be patient and hopefully your hard work will pay off.

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Friends play a giant role in the social media world.  They can, of course, be a lot of things – actual friends, business contacts, potential clients, vendors, employees, etc.  Being a good friend in the social media world is not just something we do as a point of courtesy, it is something we do because it benefits our bottom line.

Of course we use some of these friends to vote for our stories or posts, we return the favor and elevate their status within the social networking world, but what other benefits can we derive from being “good friends?”  For one, developing quality relationships extends yourself and your brand in ways that would be impossible otherwise.  For each person you befriend, perform a favor for, vote for their post, etc., you greatly increase your chances that your friend will do the same for you and your brand.  Think of it as subcontracting virtual salespeople.  The only cost is courtesy and the potential benefits are huge.  You do not really know who most of these people are and nowadays the chances that your good deed can come back to benefit you has increased dramatically.

Additionally, it will help for you to remain in contact with your friends regardless of whether you need to solicit a favor.  By maintaining a friendly relationship with your communities you extend the relationship beyond the professional into a more personal realm where favors become more frequent and are less likely to be followed with an expectation of return.  Drop a line from time to time.  Keep track of birthdays.  Comment on a particularly good story or post that your friends have made.  These are small things that can ultimately lead to your success or failure.  As much as we would like to think that we alone have individual control of our success in new media, success will not come to those who do not maintain good relationships with the online community in which they inhabit.

Finally, do not hesitate to defend a friend from unwarranted attacks.  Online relationships, while different than those in the “real world,” share some of the same conventions.  Sticking up for a friend will prove yourself as not only a good person, but someone who has respect within the community.  Moreover, even if the attacks are warranted you may want to strategically defend a friend depending on what sort of relationship and needs you intend to derive.  This sounds terribly opportunistic, but it is those who act strategically in the social media world who ultimately succeed.  Strategically managing your friend lists and maintaining good relationships is one way to ensure your success.

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Social media has amassed unprecedented levels of communication between companies and clients.  It has also most assuredly allowed for new industries to emerge and for new people to become successful through the careful application of marketing techniques.  However, for all of the potential that social media brings, there are several pitfalls that have trapped a large number of companies and individuals.  The following paragraphs will outline a couple of these pitfalls and offer some suggestions on how to avoid repeating some of the frequent mistakes made by those who have not yet mastered this burgeoning form of communication.  For additional material on this subject, check out Marketing Safari.

Oftentimes marketers begin using social media without really having done any legwork in understanding the dynamics of how one platform’s interactions differ from another.  Just because one platform is categorized as a “social media” tool doesn’t necessarily mean it shares the same relationship dynamics as all the others.  After all, social media is a conversational process and the dynamics of conversation differ depending on which platform the dialogue exists.  One must first learn how, for example, Facebook’s social interactions work – what sorts of conventions the members follow and what methods are traditionally most effective in reaching the audience.  Only then will you be ready to throw your hat into the ring.  Otherwise, you may join that long list of folks who did not conduct proper research before attempting to establish a presence. You have to listen before you act.

Remember that this is a very tech-savvy generation.  Members of social media generally possess a high degree of what is commonly referred to as “media literacy.”  As such, any attempt to “trick” this audience through manipulative marketing tactics will be exposed and your brand will ultimately pay the price.

Honesty, reliability, and straightforwardness are not just words used to make us feel good, but they are real tactics that can pay huge dividends in the world of social networking and marketing.  Also, do not hesitate to engage in conversation or dialogue with the community you intend to target.  These sorts of interactions serve not only to establish rapport with a potential client base, but also assist you in learning the dynamics of how a particular platform’s interactions and conventions function.

These are, of course, only two of perhaps countless pitfalls and suggestions when it comes to using social media to market your products or services.  Research, honesty, and dialogue are key elements to unlocking the great potential of this new media age.

What other pitfalls can you share to contribute to this thread?

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Social media networkers often run short on a very important commodity – time.  And with all the research and reading that may come with, say, blogging about cycling, it’s no wonder that many marketers are found to be pulling out their hair wondering where to find enough relevant information to construct a coherent, effective campaign.  Enter Alltop, the one stop-shop, if you will, containing numerous blog posts from a wide variety of sources each categorized by subject.  For example, if a client in the fashion industry contacts you about creating a campaign, Alltop provides an aggregated list of all the “top” blogs from the Internet concerning fashion.  Research time, then, is cut substantially as dozens of resources instantly appear on your screen.

Alltop updates its feeds every ten minutes, so content is always fresh.  Additionally, the range of links to blogs runs the gamut from those traditionally credible sources such as Yahoo to lesser-known, yet highly informative outlets.  These methods paint Alltop as the “’digital magazine rack’” of the Internet” (http://alltop.com).

To use the service, simply click on which industry interests you and then drag your mouse over the lists of blogs/articles.  A shadow box will appear containing the first paragraph of the blog or article.  If it seems relevent, click on the link to go to the corresponding website.  You can expect dozens of sources for nearly any industry with dozens more blogs and articles to help you frame your campaign.

But don’t think of Alltop as simply another search engine.  This is a site frequented by marketers not only to conduct research for specific clients, but also to remain fresh on various industries that a marketing firm may wish to target.  Pitching your campaign strategies to, say, a travel agency will be heavily aided by perousing through blogs and articles from the LA Times to Anthony Bourdain to Guide Spot…all this in less than 20 minutes.

If nothing else, Alltop provides you with what prominent online sources and outlets exist for a wide array of industries.  And you can bet that any client will expect a marketing agency – whether it be a traditional agency or one that focuses on social networking and new media – to be abreast on the latest in the industry.  Alltop provides all this while simultaneously greatly reducing the amount of time you will have to spend on research.  For more information and to try it yourself, log on to http://alltop.com.

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Do you feel like your social network marketing strategy is missing the mark? Are your attempts to communicate with new customers met with an eerie silence? While you’ve made a good choice to get involved with social media marketing, your strategy may need to be tweaked.

Here are some common social media marketing pitfalls that may be the source of the silence:

1. Constricting your strategy one-way communication: Some companies think they have the “magic bullet,” the one message that will attract all kinds of new customers. They then focus their social media marketing strategy on getting that one message out. Catchy tag lines are good for grabbing attention, but what happens after that? No one message can possibly attract a broad range of people. Even if it did, there needs to be some type of incentive for people to engage with your company. If your organization is speaking to customers without enabling them to provide feedback, you are missing out on opportunities to build customer loyalty and to gather useful research data.
2. Focusing on two-way communication between your company and a single member: It seems that the solution to one-way communication would be to promote two-way communication between your company and individual members. But, this is not enough. Sure it’s a step in the right direction. At least you’re engaging potential customers, but if you only engage them one-on-one, you’re missing out on the true potential of social media sites. Ideally you want to members to speak out on your company’s behalf not just get information from you. You want them to help you get the word out, to communicate with each other and to spread the word through their own networks. This is the way messages spread at a viral pace.
3. Relying on too much hype: People are increasingly becoming media savvy. They can smell hype from a mile away and are often turned off. It’s great to focus on your company’s strengths - and you should. But, if you cross the line into the realm of over-inflated adjectives and exaggerated testimonials, you begin to lose credibility.
4. Repurposing traditional micro sites: Many agencies are more familiar with traditional interactive marketing strategies and may feel that repurposing a successful micro site can be a social media marketing strategy. The main problem with this, according to a recent post by Jeremiah, is that many of the computer-to-human features of micro sites don’t foster the self-expression or sharing that drives successful social media marketing campaigns.

These are just a few common pitfalls. Social media marketing is not like traditional marketing. It presents a new batch of challenges and almost unlimited potential. The key is to figure out how to engage others and stop talking to yourself.

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