Social Media Marketing – Have a Personal Guide?

I was reading the highlights from the Social Media Marketing 2009 study by Marketingsherpa and as an active internet marketer I make a point to learn every single day. Social Media is an ever changing animal and just when you think you caught up you didn’t. It is with that thought that I recommend to every company online or personal brand that you consider outsourcing your social marketing campaigns to a professional who is in the trenches every day.

Each day I wake up I apply new strategies for my clients and make sure that they are well informed of what’s emerging, who’s playing the game and what we are doing about it. This concept extends to other areas as well, for example – search engine optimization, search engine marketing, pay per click advertising, email marketing and more. If you don’t follow the social marketing trends your brand could easily be eclipsed by a lesser known one with the right internet marketing consulting and management. Do you want that to happen to you? Of course you don’t!

The Rise of Social Media (from Google Insights Search Tool over last year)
- See the burst starting in January 2009 to present? Pay Attention to this!
- Ask yourself – was Barack Obama more successful by leveraging social media?

I have some great supporting data so here goes:

Top 10 Search terms related to social media  Worldwide, Last 12 months
1.     social media marketing  (top term)
2.     social marketing     (top term)
3.     edad media
4.     social networking
5.     social media networking
6.     new social media
7.     new media
8.     la edad media
9.     social media sites
10.     social media blog

Rising searches
1.     Obama social media +950% (people are impressed by Obama and his social media campaign)
2.     social media breakfast     +250% (people want to meet and tweet up)
3.     social media monitoring     +190% (watching social media)
4.     social media icons     +190% (who are rising stars)
5.     social media analytics     +130% (how can we measure it?)
6.     social media strategy     +90%
7.     social media companies     +70%
8.     social media campaigns     +60%
9.     social media campaign     +60%
10.    social marketing     +50%

The MarketingSherpa report is a summary of 1800 marketing and public relations professionals who participated in the study. The overwhelming trend is that companies are continuing to spend on social media marketing as a method of communicating with customers and to reach new markets. Are you using Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, etc. to reach new markets, find new clients, new opportunities? I know we use so many services that it can be a dizzying array of social media applications. For example, I recently met an e-commerce store owner who said he had tried everything that’s possible to build his business and that it had hit it’s maturity. So, I pulled out my iphone and isolated conversations talking about the particular niche product in seconds and was able to locate new opportunities with a few clicks.

Another important trend is that are no shortage of tradeshows, self-help ebooks, consultants, gurus and experts. Personally, when I see expert I tend to think that is a bold statement in such a new industry. Reminds me of the SEO experts who would guarantee you a top 10 position with a wave of the magic wand.

My advice is that if you aren’t working with a social media professional start as soon as possible or call me and I can help your business.