Paula Drum who was involved with many of H&R Block's social business initiatives recently announced her pursuit of a new opportunity. I've met Paula a few times and she's both smart and approachable—I wish her the best of luck in her new venture. She's also left us with a bit of wisdom called "10 Tips For Social Media Marketers" that I highly recommend reading and contemplating over. Stop what you are doing and just go read the entire write up. Below are a just a few of my favorite points. Good luck Paula!
- Media $ versus human capital – I mentioned human capital earlier. Companies can spend a lot of money trying to launch a social media program. For the most part, I would really classify those efforts as an integrated marketing campaign. Your approach and funding of an integrated marketing campaign needs to be in line with the size and scope of your overall marketing budget. Social media programs can be a lot more cost efficient from a media budget standpoint, but, you still need human capital to run them. In many cases you may be trading media $ for the human capital needed to run a program. For example if you are taking the first step of listening and engaging in the conversation, there is no media buy necessary. However, you do need to have some person dedicated to scanning and responding. Ideally, that person is an employee of the company. Why this should be an employee leads to the next tip.
- Your agency needs to walk the walk – I hate paying an agency to learn on my dime. When we started three years ago, social media was so new and changing so rapidly that we were all learning together. Today
there are many different agencies that are building expertise in social
media including public relations firms, interactive agencies and newly
formed agencies focusing on social media. As you select an agency partner make sure that they don’t just talk the talk but also walk the walk. Are they active in social media? Does the agency blog or twitter? Judge the agency not solely on their pitch, but also on their actions.
- Selling the C-Suite or ROI – One of the most popular questions that I get asked is how to build support at the C-level. Having a clearly defined objective is critically important to gain support of any initiative. However, everyone is always focused on the ROI or return on the investment. I have defined ROI a little differently in this new and emerging space as Risk Of Ignoring. There is an absolute change occurring in how we communicate and seek information as a society. The millennial generation is the first digital native generation with very different expectations of companies and marketing. In the not so distant future the millennials will be a larger purchasing demographic than the boomers. Not understanding this segment will be detrimental for future marketers. Watch Shift Happens and share it with your senior leadership team. It is a great example of how we are living in exponential times.
