Long before my professional career started, websites were built and controlled by high school students and information technology departments.

A decade later, when those same high school students became college students, they started an internet revolution called social media. The movement led to many companies to rely on interns and recent graduates for navigation through this new communication phenomenon.

In both scenarios, marketers and communicators were somewhat limited in how well they managed the messaging. However in 2010, I think we have entered a phase where social media marketing is now better understood and better controlled by upper level management. Seriously, how many events can a marketer go to without sitting in on at least one social media presentation?

With that comes better planning of resources and content. This is contrary to the issues raised by Jason Fried of 37signals in an interview with Forbes.com. He argued that the biggest problem with social media marketing is that the social websites are just tools and that most companies have yet to decide who they are and what they stand for on social media.

In just a few years this will no longer be an issue. Much like marketing departments starting taking back control of their websites asking their IT department to turn them over the keys so they could optimize the site for search engines, they too will start asking questions about how to start a successful group on Linkedin.

The next stage in social media marketing ready to start flourishing will be more meaningful content publishing and consumer interaction led by senior marketing professionals, who are no longer too naive to ask tough questions of interns and recent graduates.

If you work in marketing or communications, you probably have little doubt that your organization should start utilizing social media, but are you ready?

From my experience, C-level executives often worry about what could go wrong. They worry people will say bad things and even worse that no one will do anything about it. The reality is that if you have company, people are already out there talking you. And if you don’t know about what they are saying, chances are you are already doing nothing about it.

I put together a series of questions that might help you decide whether your department or organization is ready to join the conversation on social media.

• Do you have a marketing or communications department?
• Does your marketing or communications department produce news articles, press releases, videos, photos and/or events?
• Do you know who your target audience?
• Is your target audience on social media platforms?
• Do you have key messages?
• Can your social media administrator answer common questions posed on social media?
• Do you have the ability to call on experts within your business to help with complex questions and situations?
• Does someone in your department have experience utilizing social media platforms?
• Have you contacted a lawyer or your legal department to see if there are any subject areas or statements you might want to avoid?

If you answered yes to all these questions, chances are you organization is ready. If not, your problems may be bigger than deciding if your organization is ready for social media.

[digg=http://digg.com/business_finance/Why_are_marketers_so_obsessed_with_Twitter]“Twitter asks ‘What are you doing?’ You can tell Twitter what you are doing on twitter.com or you can text from your cell phone.” says one person who doesn’t understand twitter trying to explain it another person who knows less about it. This conversation is usually followed by a “Hills” like awkward silence and a few shrugs of the shoulders.

I’ll be the first to admit I was absolutely lost the first couple of days I started using Twitter. I didn’t follow anyone I cared about, none of my friends were on it and I didn’t understand what to say or what to do

Looking back, as much as I hate to admit it, it wasn’t until a weird owl named “Mr. Tweet” gave me a few suggestions of who I should follow before I began to find some interesting people on Twitter. From there I was able to branch out, finding a few more people who were conversing with the people I was newly following.

Before I knew it I had a nice little network of people to follow and talk to. Most of them weren’t too weird. For the most part they were interested in some of the same things I was: Minnesota, healthcare marketing, the internet, celebrities and sports.

So why are marketers so obsessed with Twitter?

Because they care what you are doing and thinking, especially as it relates to products and services they have to offer.

A quick search and you can find that there are people actually interested in everything from Anoop Dogg on American Idol to polar ice caps. Marketers find this invaluable because they can have real conversations with people thinking about products and services they have to offer.

Take for example this scenario layed out by Peter Hershberg in Advertising Age:

“A young woman in Chapel Hill, N.C., wakes up sweating. Her air conditioner has died. She knows she wants a new one, but she wants one that will be energy-efficient, easy to install on her own, reliable and not too expensive.

She hops online and types, “I need a new A/C today; I have $250 to spend — help!” into Twitter, which in turn feeds automatically into her Facebook status. She immediately begins to receive replies in both channels from friends with advice on retail outlets, air-conditioner brands and how to stay cool with no A/C. She also sees an @ reply on Twitter from a national big-box retailer letting her know its Chapel Hill location has new air conditioners in stock, as well as a link to the section of its website that shows air conditioners for under $250.”

This is a great example of how social media can be used be marketers. Consumers don’t even need to walk into a store to be helped. All they have to do is say what they are thinking about something and someone should be there to help them. Zappos.com has over 430 employees actively mining Twitter and it is part of their customer services. Do you?

Follow me at twitter.com/allanwoodstrom.

Ever wonder why each month seems to be “National ‘Something or Other’ Month?”

It’s called Marketing.

I will preface this entire article by saying, I don’t think that all “National ‘Something or Other’ Months” are bad or get lost in the shuffle. In fact, I would even go as far as to say for healthcare marketers, “National ‘Something or Other’ Months” can be quite effective.

Just yesterday I received an email that said,

“March is colon cancer awareness month.

http://www.mngastro.com/stories/

Please schedule your colonoscopy or encourage your friends and family members over the age of 50 or if you have a family history.”

The email was from a colleague, who received it from an employee at Minnesota Gastroenterology, P.A.  The stories are great and it looks like they are using a local media partner to help spread the message. This is a great example of a local healthcare group making the most out of a “National ‘Something or Other’ Month.” I am sure their schedulers are busy this month making appointments for the rest of the year.

Finally, this post wouldn’t be complete with me getting on my soapbox and preaching the use of social media. I didn’t see that Minnesota Gastroenterology had posted the videos to YouTube. A comScore report in December 2009 showed YouTube accounted for 25% of all searches done on Google sites. In total, YouTube alone had a higher search volume than on all of Yahoo’s sites. It might not produce dynamite results, but it might be worth getting a few extra hundred people to the Minnesota Gastroenterology web site over the next couple of months.

I did a little research to find out if there were any musicians or hip hop artists successfully using Twitter to market themselves. Surprisingly, I found very few.

MySpace, still the ultimate hangout for musicians, rappers and hip-hip artists has helped launch the careers of many young musicians, including: Soulja Boy Tell Em and Sean Kingston. But can an emerging social media tool like Twitter, do the same thing?

My resounding answer is no. MySpace and Facebook have two major things that Twitter does not: users and features. It was estimated that Twitter has about 3.5 million active users. Compare that to Facebook and MySpace, who respectively have 175 and 110 million users and it’s clear which network has the greatest opportunity for exposure. 

Also, musicians on MySpace can create unique experiences for their fans. Passersby can listen to music, view photos and read blog posts. Compare that to Twitter, information and interactivity is limited. Other than a background, which may or may not look good on every screen, not much can be used to differentiate new artists from one another.

I will close with a final comment, saying that musicians with an established brands like Jay-Z or Diddy could attract quite a following. It just depends on whether or not they embrace Twitter. Notice how many people are following NBA star, Shaquille O’Neal. 

Hip Hop Artists on Twitter
Soulja Boy Tell Em – http://twitter.com/souljaboytellem
Kanye West – http://twitter.com/Kanye_West
50 Cent – http://twitter.com/50Cent
Snoop Dogg – http://twitter.com/snoopdogg
Diddy - http://twitter.com/iamdiddy
Q-Tip – http://twitter.com/QtipTheAbstract
Noreaga – http://twitter.com/noreaga
Ghostface Killah – http://twitter.com/GhostfaceKillah
MC Hammer – http://twitter.com/MChammer
Joe Budden – http://twitter.com/mousebudden

Please let me know if you think I left out any major hip hop artists using Twitter.

[digg=http://digg.com/business_finance/Expectations_of_Facebook_Marketing]Clients interested in social media marketing are almost always interested in what they can do on Facebook. And it’s understandable why; users spend hours each week looking at pictures and interacting with friends. When discussing Facebook marketing, it is important to have reasonable expectations about what is possible and what is most likely to happen, given your client’s requests. When putting together a Facebook marketing plan, below are a few things you should and shouldn’t expect.

Expect:

• Expect to do a lot of audience research if you want good results building an application.
• Expect negative reactions if you decide to send out mass messages to random people or you are making a lot of random friend requests. Facebook could suspend your account if you do this. Conversely, you should try posting videos, notes and pictures and allow people to look at what they find most interesting.
• If you build an application, expect to have to put in some time promoting it before it promotes itself.
• Expect a lot to your application usage growth to come from friends inviting other friends and news feed notices going out showing that someone has added or utilized part of an application.
• Expect that you should to utilize other social media sites like YouTube, Twitter, Digg, and blogs to achieve the greatest results.

Don’t expect:

• Don’t expect people to become fans of your brand or business, just because you created a page.
• Don’t expect people to put a great deal of time and effort into conversation with your brand, unless they are uniquely touched or are passionate about your company.
• Don’t expect great results, if you aren’t doing anything that brings value or entertainment to the end user.
• Don’t expect a lot of people to click on your ads if you are simply looking for brand awareness. Offering an incentive or posting a low price for a product will most of the time increase your click through rate.
• If you build an application, don’t expect users to tell friends on their own. It’s best to have sharing built into the application.
• Don’t expect a great campaign to last forever.

Please feel free share any tips or advice if you think I may have forgot any. Additionally, here are some more great resources to check out:

The Top Five Viral Facebook Techniques – AllFacebook.com

Facebook Developers Network – Facebook.com

A Failed Facebook Marketing Campaign (About Walmart) – Social Media Optimization Blog

Facebook Marketing Stunt Backfires – Marketing Pilgrim

From the makers of Website Grader, comes Facebook Grader – an application that measures your reach and authority on Facebook. Not that I scored horribly, but I think this is a hilarious measurement made for older social media marketers who want to see how popular they think they are.

A Facebook power user doesn’t care about their reach and authority within a group of fake friends. Most power users care about keeping in touch with real friends, sharing real things and of course snooping on other people’s business.

I’m actually a fan of HubSpot’s Website Grader, but I don’t necessarily see the point of Facebook Grader as a measurement of a user’s authority. I would however take it more seriously if it measured the reach and authority of a Facebook Application.

Now that I’ve bashed Facebook Grader from the 25-year-old Male perspective, it’s actually a really smart marketing idea for Hubspot. The application is good link bait and will attract the older marketers who are clueless enough about social media marketing that they will actually use it and perhaps consult with HubSpot. Mashable didn’t think it was so bad either. What do you think?

BTW: I got a 77.

Where to start with all these social media sites?

It’s tough to be successful marketing with social media tools without a strategic plan. I ran across a method of helping marketing professionals decide where start their social media marketing plans. It’s called the POST Method. It was derived by social media analysts at Forrester.

POST is an acronym, which stands for People, Objectives, Strategy and Technology. To break it down further, below is a list of questions within each category that should help you think about starting a social media marketing plan.

People: Who is your audience? Are they online? What do they do online? What influences their decision making? Are they producers, readers, or both? Are there existing communities within your industry?

Objectives: What are your goals? Do you want to gain exposure? Do you want to create brand evangelists who will promote your product to passers by? How will you measure
your results?

Strategy: What are your key messages? What do you want evangelists to tell passersby? How do you want to change or improve relationships with customers? How can you get the most out new relationships forged?

Technology: What resources do you need to connect with customers? Do you want to create an entire community? Do you want to create an application to interact with customers in existing communities? Does your audience listen to podcasts? Watch videos? Read blogs? Or watch presentations?

Lots of questions of here to get you started thinking about creating a social media marketing strategy. If you find yourself unable to answer a lot of these questions, support numerous social media relationships and/or execute social media development, it may be best to contact an agency. If you are entirely new to the social media and are a bit overwhelmed or uncomfortable, they best way to learn is to indulge yourself, explore and listen.

If you need some more advanced tips, check out this post by Rohit Bhargava.

Burger King's Whopper Sacrifice Facebook App

Burger King, home of the flame broiled Whopper, has recently launched yet another unique, edgy, marketing campaign. The brand that brings you The (creepy) King, meat smelling body spray, and many other odd, attention grabbing campaigns, is at it again. The Whopper Sacrifice is a new Facebook application that provides users with a coupon for a free Whooper, if the user is willing to sacrifice 10 friends from his/her Facebook account.

There has been a lot of negative feedback on this campaign, citing the fact that it encourages users to exhibit anti-social behavior on a platform fueled by social connections. Many bloggers are shocked that Burger King would launch an application that doesn’t make friends, but instead creates potential enemies. Good or bad, it certainly got a lot of press.

Which is exactly why this is a brilliant campaign – it is a unique idea, funny, and it has sparked a lot of attention and discussion. It has all the ingredients for a successful campaign: the brand is getting a ton of exposure and it is driving users to a measurable, revenue driving (most will buy a soda and/or fries), event when customers visit to Burger King to redeem the coupon.  Not to mention it is  accomplishing what all marketers hope and wish for, it has gone viral.

To those that argue that it is damaging to the brand, you are taking this campaign way too seriously. Facebook users have plenty of pseudo-friends and are easily able to remove “friends” without damaging any real/online relationships, this is simply a funny way of cleaning up a friend’s list. Also, the fact that people will actually go through with this shows that the Whopper must be THAT good, right?

Although a great campaign, it could certainly be improved. Sure, this was pretty viral, getting over 15,000 users in its first day, but Burger King missed an opportunity by not having a way to encourage users to invite friends to add the application. This could have been accomplished through a feature to get free fries by having enough “true friends” identify a certain user’s friendship as being worth more than a Whopper.

Another fun idea to improve on the idea would be to add a level of competitiveness to the application, like awarding the Whopper’s biggest fan, the user willing to sacrifice the most friends, with free Whopper’s for a year.

Overall, great idea, very good execution.