Is the new, high-profile Web 2.0 darling the right vehicle for your marketing goals? Take a look at some considerations when leveraging social media's strengths -- not just its hype -- for your brand.
Accessible digital video, simple uploading, broadband. As soon as I watched my first video on YouTube, I knew it was going to be big.
After all, marketers go where the consumers are. And with 100MM daily views, it didn't take long before clients boldly proclaimed that they wanted to leverage the video site as part of their marketing programs: "I want to be on YouTube."
To me, this sounds like a marketer looking to embark on a social media crusade with a brand, ready to embrace the "consumer-in-control" movement and think outside the traditional marketing box. While the instincts of this marketer are dead on -- taking your brand to the social media arena is an important ingredient in the marketing mix -- the challenge is assimilating the entire social media landscape before you leap.
Many marketers today are still primarily focused on traditional media channels and are not familiar with the array of social media opportunities at their disposal. When they decide to finally shift their tactics, their kneejerk reaction is to jump into the most obvious choices, like YouTube and Facebook, without honestly evaluating these new channels' strengths against their own corporate goals.
The reality is that YouTube, a sexy, high-profile Web 2.0 darling, is not necessarily the right vehicle for most marketers. The good news is many social media web sites and tools have matured to the point where marketers can really begin exploring opportunities that do make sense for their business. Here are some examples of ways that companies have leveraged the social realm to elevate their brand.
Tweets heard in the Amazon
Arguably, one of the hottest social networking sites today is Twitter. It's a relatively simple service, which is probably what causes many marketers to dismiss its powerful influence. However, when you consider that in just a short period of time Twitter has grown from an idea to a phenomenon, it's worth your time to take a look at it.
This is precisely what the marketers at Amazon.com did. Amazon was looking for new methods of engaging their customers one-on-one, specifically around their Amazon MP3 service. Knowing consumers crave deals and that competition from services such as iTunes is intense, Amazon launched the Amazon MP3 Twitter feed.
Amazon MP3 is a simple concept -- Twitter users simply sign up to Amazon MP3, which sends alerts about special MP3 download deals and includes a link where they can take immediate action. The model appears almost too simple, but since its launch, more than 5,700 people have signed up for this quick and easy direct connection with a global brand.
MyMoney's on Facebook
Like Twitter, Facebook is another social media site that has taken on a life of its own, with more than 65 million passionate users. Despite its success among the general population, it seemed like only politicians such as presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain were leveraging it to promote their brand effectively.
But marketers are starting to test strategies beyond just creating their own pages. For example, Fiserv, a leading provider of information technology services to the financial industry, recognized Gen Y consumers as desirable prospects for many credit unions. To connect the two sides, Fiserv launched a Facebook application called MyMoney, which lets users search, join and manage funds from their credit union account from their profile pages. To leverage Facebook's viral capabilities, every person who adds the MyMoney widget then alerts their friends, which creates a powerful, self-propelled ripple effect that will ultimately continue to drive adoption. It's a very simple concept but has been a huge success, as the average user spends about 20 minutes on their Facebook page daily and 36 credit unions now support the application.
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