Continuing the theme of my last column: social media are too big for marketers to ignore. According to the Nielsen Company social media already consume about 22% of all internet time. Marketers are being drawn to social media like moths to a flame…and quite a few get burned!

A new marketing

In traditional media, marketers were the hosts: they paid the piper and so called the tune. In social media, marketers are the guests. Social media are constructed and maintained by consumers for consumers: marketers are, at best, an inconvenience.

Social media expect high standards of authenticity. Marketing hype, half-truths and double-speak get found out fast. At the same time, the internet is forever. So clear guidelines are essential for those engaging on behalf of brands.

Digimarketers have to accept that control over brand messaging is no longer possible. Perhaps total control never was possible, but marketers got used to the illusion that they were in charge. Social media shatters that myth: consumer-created messages vastly out-number marketer-crafted communications.

Listening post

A listening post will let you hear what is already being said about your brands. Google offers some free tools for this. In addition to simple searches, you can set up “Google Alerts” to notify you by email when key words/phrases are used anywhere on the web.

If your brand name is in frequent use, Google Alerts will be overwhelming. Then it’s time to invest in one of the paid monitoring systems. These will give you a backcast over the last six months or so of social media activity, and can include an ongoing monitoring service. For a modest fee, you can find out exactly what is being said about you, and by whom.

This information can assist all manner of digital marketing decisions and should be the foundation of your digimarketing plan.

You will see the exact words and phrases that real people use when talking about your brands. These become natural search phrases around which to build your websites (search engine optimization). Natural because these are words people already use around your brand. If they search using these words, they’ll find it appropriate that your brand, and your website, show up. In digital marketing, just as in traditional marketing, it’s always best to build on what is already in the mind of the consumer. These phrases also become buys for search engine marketing campaigns. When these phrases are used in a search, your ad shows up on the right, at a cost per click.

Brand advocates

More importantly, the listening post doesn’t only monitor what is being said: it monitors who is saying it. We can identify our brand advocates (and our brand detractors).

The easiest way to attain authenticity and embrace the new marketing mindset, is to identify and reach out to existing brand advocates. Rather than trying to teach authenticity to marketers (old dogs new tricks?), it’s probably easier to work with existing (authentic) brand supporters. All they need is supporting brand information.

Brand advocates could be included in a think-tank, or on-line focus group, charged with providing input to brand development, or new social media campaigns. Not only will this group of enthusiastic consumers likely come up with useful new ideas, but the mere act of engaging them will increase their brand dedication and generate useful social media output. As they chatter about the future of the brand, and how they believe its social media presence should evolve, brand advocates are automatically generating the brand mentions, discussions, and links that will fire up the rest of your digimarketing.

Don’t forget the brand detractors. Converts can become the most enthusiastic evangelists! If we can engage brand detractors, explore their complaints, and hopefully resolve them, we can create super-advocates. At minimum, complainers become a valuable (and free) source of market research, showing us the limits of our brand’s appeal, and now those limits might be extended.

Insiders

Successful social media marketing creates a feeling amongst key customers that they are “insiders”. That they have access to privileged information: a powerful incentive for social media users. Companies that specialize in stimulating word-of-mouth ( buzz), often reward their agents with points redeemable for gifts. Then they find the points are never cashed! For the agents, access to inside information, the ability to know things that their peers don’t yet know, is more than sufficient reward. Never underestimate the power of one-upmanship in social networks.

This article originally appeared in Bangkok Post, July 12, 2010

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