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Social Media Battles for Budget

Despite the explosion of social media, many marketers still appear reluctant to invest significant resources in blogs, wikis, forums, social networking, podcasts and virtual reality worlds.


According to Coremetrics, "More than three-quarters of US marketing professionals surveyed think that social media marketing—also known as Web 2.0—can give them a competitive edge."

"Marketers are aware of the impact that social media marketing can have on their overall program but view it as uncharted territory, not worthy of their budget," said John Squire, senior vice president of product strategy at Coremetrics.



While many organizations sit on the sidelines waiting for social media best practices to emerge, the innovators and visionaries are venturing into the world of Web 2.0.

It's not too late to integrate a social media budget into your 2008 marketing plan, and here are some ideas on how to get started:

• Build Wikipedia pages for your company and top executives.
• Join LinkedIn.
• Launch a corporate blog.
• Monitor industry news, trends, blogs and forums through RSS feeds.
• Read and comment on industry blogs and forums.
• Find out how wikis can make your organization more efficient and productive.
• Tap into the power of viral videos.

Need help with your social media strategy? Contact PR 20/20 today for a free 2-hour consultation.

Is Social Media More Relevant Than Mainstream Media?

Mainstream media (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc.) continues to play an essential role in every PR campaign; however, social media sites such as Digg, Reddit, Mashable and Del.icio.us are becoming more relevant and rapidly changing the way people consume news.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) recently released an intriguing report - "The Latest News Headlines - Your Vote Counts" - comparing the news agenda of the mainstream media for one week with the news agenda found on a host of user-news sites for the same period.

Here are a few of the key findings:

• The news agenda of the three user-sites that week was markedly different from that of the mainstream press. Many of the stories users selected did not appear anywhere among the top stories in the mainstream media coverage studied.
• The sources news sites draw on are strikingly different from the mainstream media. Seven in ten stories on the user sites come either from blogs or Web sites such as YouTube and WebMD that do not focus mostly on news.
• The user-news agenda, at least in this one-week snapshot, was more diverse, yet also more fragmented and transitory than that of the mainstream news media.
  

The report goes on to conclude that, "For now, the percentage of Americans who rely exclusively on news from user-driven sites is just a fraction of what it is for mainstream news sites. And in this increasingly fragmented era, many who visit Digg, Del.icio.us, and Reddit may also be reading the online versions of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal."

"But whether or not we see further divergence between user-driven sites and mainstream media over the next few years will surely remain a key question for researches, journalists, and of course, citizens."

While the debate continues, one thing is for sure - the PR industry is evolving, and traditional agencies that don't quickly adapt to integrate social media will be left behind.



See what The San Francisco Chronicle wrote about the PEJ report:

User-news sites offer diverse stories, some questionable source
The San Francisco Chronicle
By Joe Garofoli - Sept. 12, 2007

. . . The traditional news outlet wants to put a lot of gravitas on their front page. They want the readers to eat their spinach," said Kourosh Karimkhany, general manager of Wired Digital, which owns Reddit. Technology allows users to create their own news "agenda" from multiple online sources, rendering a traditional front page increasingly "irrelevant," he said.

Instead, on these growing sites - Digg welcomed 19.5 million unique visitors last month - consumers rely on the "wisdom of crowds" (other readers) to figure out what are the top stories of the day.

The study found that the news items on these sites are "more diverse, more transitory and often draw on a very different and perhaps controversial list of sources." It found that 40 percent of the stories on user-news sites originated on blogs and 24 percent came from mainstream sites like BBC News. Only 5 percent came from wire services. . . .

Blog Bought by NY Times

The convergence of social media and traditional media took another leap forward today as the New York Times acquired the popular Freakanomics blog.

"This will be the first blog that the New York Times acquires and adds to its larger media family, but there’s word that the newspaper plans to acquire even more blogs in the not-too-distant future. . . ." Visit Mashable.com to read more.

The Power of Viral Videos

Public relations as we know it is rapidly evolving, and organizations caught watching from the sidelines are being left behind.

Innovators and early adopters are taking the risks, and reaping the rewards, of launching social media campaigns. These organizations, seeking more affordable and effective, non-traditional marketing solutions, are turning to online tools such as blogs, podcasts, wikis and videos – and some are having remarkable success.

Take, for example, Blendtec. For the YouTube.com faithful, CEO Tom Dickson (that's him in the lab coat) is a social-media celebrity. But for those of you who aren’t familiar with the “Will It Blend?” video series, it is a case study in the power of viral videos.

In a recent StartupJournal.com article entitled, “Marketing Videos Are A Hit in Their Own Right,” it was reported that as a result of a series of online-only videos featuring Dickson blending items such as, golf balls, EZ Cheese, Transformers, magnets and iPhones (yes, he actually obliterated an iPhone), sales of Blentec’s home blenders sky-rocketed 43% in 2006.

It’s even more impressive when you consider that Blentec didn’t have a marketing department until 2006, and launched the video effort on a $50 budget!

Have you considered how social media is changing your business, and your industry? Maybe it's time that you do.