Social Media for the Rest of Us - December 18th, 2009

Social Media for the Rest of Us This week I joined a brand new group in Madison, WI for people in the marketing and social media field. When I told the group manager I’d like to add my blog to their list, she asked what my specialty is. After thinking about it, I replied “my readers are educated, intelligent, professional and successful people who just aren’t focused on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. My goal is to sift through everything that’s happening and distill for them just what they need to know.” Let me know if that’s working for ya!

Because that’s where the money is? Chances are, if you’re member of an official LinkedIn “group”, you’re getting more than your fair share of spammy notes regarding multilevel marketing schemes. So I posed the question on an open forum in LinkedIn and asked how others are handling that. Based on their responses, I wrote an e-mail to the managers for a PR group and a Madison professionals group. I explained that I was unaffiliating with them since my reasons for being on linked did not include having other networkers selling me goods and services. But my real question is, are MLMers really finding it lucrative to prey on Linkedin contacts? 

One Good Acronym Deserves Another A hot social media topic these days is about determining what the return on investment (ROI) should be for these networks. Given the demise of print advertising and the decreased importance of broadcasting, executives are concerned about limiting their recession-decimated marketing spending only on proven outlets. According to Lee Odden from TopRank Online Marketing, you can’t measure the medium, because it’s not a strategy.  Or as he puts it “what’s the ROI of a telephone?” The answer, according to blogger Harish Kotadia, might be to look instead at key performance indicators (KPIs) like comments, fans, bookmarks, and the like which are generated from having an effective online presences. Wonder if that’ll work for the most important acronym - the CEO.

Raving Reviews Last week media expert Peter Kim asked whether companies should “really be listening to these people who are telling the world their opinions” when they make comments or post online to their social networks. The way he sees it, “status updates are carefully crafted to create a particular image, perhaps with the intent of getting a new job, settling an old score, or selling social media advertising.” He forgot to mention that a lot of people are just trying to get noticed! Do you rely on reviews from Yelp or Amazon or Yahoo? How about Twitter and Facebook? Should the providers of goods and services be paying attention?