Here’s an article I wrote for Energy Central’s Marketing Muse publication – a broad brushstroke on social media marketing:

The Social Media Bandwagon: Jump on board using your marketing sense

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, chances are you’re hearing the drumbeat of social media marching it’s way over and threatening to overwhelm you with new technology, too much information and the grand prophecy of solving all your marketing and communications problems. With so much swirling around, it’s really difficult to make sense of it. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Delicious, blogging, social networks and on and on. What can these really do for you in marketing? Will they solve your marketing problems, or will they just consume more time and resources?

The answer can most definitely be a “yes” to all of the above, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The biggest problem for businesses right now is understanding how to derive value from social media. Fortunately there are many potential opportunities to gain value, from product development to internal communications as well as customer support and marketing. But, where do you start? Here are some typical questions I get:

• What tactics work best for the energy industry?
• I get how it works for B2C companies, but how can you implement in B2B companies?
• How can I make any time to participate?
• Nobody talks about (your product or industry here) online, so what’s the point?
• How can I sell my boss on moving some of our budget away from traditional channels and into social media?

Talking tactics

Let me put this out there first: Social media are very new and new forms appear frequently, so at this point, there are not tried-and-true tactics to use in the energy industry, or any other industry. Certainly, companies like Burger King have had one-off wildly successful viral campaigns — like Subservient Chicken — but, as more people delve into social media, there will be fewer of those wild successes and many more smaller ones. Just like in the early days of the World Wide Web, companies are in there experimenting, having successes and failures. But, there are ways to narrow your scope. The best way to do that is to understand how social media changes the distribution of media.

The changing media landscape
The advent of online media — websites, online newspapers, etc. — definitely expanded the way people consume information. But social media has radically changed it. Now, anyone and everyone is free to create content and share it. And, with so many places to find information, anyone with any small niche they care about is likely to find other people online who care about those same things. What this means is that instead of being able to reach a mass audience — or even an audience in a trade publication or a local newspaper — you’ve got to find smaller audiences to go after. It also means that you are no longer in control of the message or the brand. Whether or not you decide to experiment in social media, that fact remains. Customers, partners, vendors, reporters, bloggers, analysts — they are framing your message.
With all that in mind, here is a framework to think about taking steps into social media.

Listen: It’s difficult to know where to even start participating if you don’t know where the conversations are or what they are about. A simple, rudimentary way to start that is to do a Google Blog Search to find some blogs that are talking about topics related to your company and/or your industry. Just plug in some keywords that you’re interested in. Another place to find blogs is within an industry portal, like Energy Central. Many will have blogs themselves and may also link out to other blogs related to your industry. You can do similar searches by topic in other social media as well, including YouTube and Twitter. There are also sophisticated tools you can subscribe to that help you to understand and measure the activity about you and your competitors. This is crucial if you plan on creating a social media strategy or are interested in integrating social media into your other marketing or customer service strategies.

Discover: When you start listening, you discover what the conversations are about. How do people really feel about your company, your industry? What are they saying about you? Who’s active in the conversation? Where is it happening? Is your competition taking part? What about industry experts or analysts? Social media conversations are like being in a conversation at your book club or a party — they are more candid then you’ll ever get from a focus group, survey or research project. Pay attention to what people are saying – you might get ideas for new products or services, or find out about a customer service problem you’re having.
Make connections: Find a post that’s interesting? Comment about it. Thank the writer for the ideas or thoughts. Why would you do this? It’s really just a way of making connections — almost like a handshake through the Internet, a way to build trust, create awareness.

Share: Once you feel more comfortable simply connecting, now it’s your turn to participate. Experiment with asking and answering Expert requests on LinkedIn. Share an article you enjoyed on Facebook or another social network. That back-and-forth interaction is crucial in social media, because others will come to know you by understanding more about you. This level of trust builds as you expand your network through sharing.

Personally experimenting with social media is a good way to get your feet wet and understand the dynamics of these tools, but it may not offer you enough to make decisions about an approach to marketing. The best thing to remember about social media is that all of these technologies and platforms are really just tools you can use in your marketing toolbox. Figuring out the best ways to use them — and which ones make sense for your company — takes a strategic approach.

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