Social Media Marketing Plans
A great article came out today from Media Post about how many companies are incorporating social media into their marketing plans.
It appears that 90% of all corporations plan on incorporating social media in the coming years marketing plans, of which 86% are going to spend more than they have in the past. This is an amazing statistic when you think that millions of companies market online, but I think it would be a a safe bet to say that number is not 90%.
With that in mind I wonder how many of these corporations will actually get their social media marketing programs off the floor, and of those which portals are they going to prioritize? The report notes that 54% of respondents are concerned about a lack of resources. I found this percentage to be rather astonishing – how do these companies plan to incorporate a new technique, but not first develop the resources to manage those techniques? Reasoning like this is why so many new marketing endeavors fail. There is an old saying that no one plans to fail, but they fail to plan, which will happen to most of these new social media efforts if they try to jump in without being properly equipped.
Corporations like these are split between two mind sets. The first mindset is that Social Media is so new and complicated that they are afraid to get started and the second mindset is that Social Media is simply creating a Facebook and Twitter page and can be maintained by an intern. Obviously I don’t agree with either of these camps. Social Media campaigns, when done properly, are as dynamic as any other marketing initiatives. They require a set strategy, goals, and plan of attack. They also require upkeep. This is not a set-it-and-forget-it type of medium. The person or team managing this process should be brand ambassadors and know the company they are working with inside and out. If not they could make mistakes that could lead to PR disasters or just end up spamming their customer base (aka: Home Depot).
So if any one who reads this is deciding to launch a social media campaign, please do the world a favor and take the time to plan this endeavor properly before jumping in. It will make for a more successful campaign and a less messy social networking market place.
