Starting a social media campaign for peanuts in tough times
I really liked this column from B.L. Ochman on BusinessWeek.com last week. In the first of six social media 
myths debunked in the column, it suggests that you can start a two- to three-month social media marketing campaign for around $50,000. Compared to a multi-million dollar advertising campaign, that sure does sound like small potatoes. But at a time of great economic uncertainty, I wondered, does a multi-faceted plan to influence consumers or potential clients through social media cost even that much?
I would argue that an enthusiastic person can make a great impact for your brand through social media in 10 to 15 hours per week. That’s enough time to:
- Write several blog posts on a blog (clearly identified as being affiliated with your company) discussing issues facing your customers in which your products and services are mentioned where truly relevant.
- Build relationships on Twitter and tweet a mix of news about your products/services along with comments and links to other content that would be of interest to your target community.
- Create a simple YouTube video interviewing a happy customer or providing a quick product demonstration. (check out the Mayo Clinic’s awesome YouTube channel with more than 200 videos for a great case study.)
- Reaching out to like-minded folks on Digg, Delicious, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Newsvine, Mixx and other social bookmarking and news sharing sites, and posting interesting blog posts, news articles, white papers, photos and videos. You can include content produced as part of your regular marketing efforts along with items that are relevant to your target community but not promotional or exclusively about your company (see a trend here?).
- Administer a Facebook or Ning group for people interested in a common passion, problem or other topic (and again, it is not recommended that the topic be your company or its products exclusively).
- Use a survey widget to start a conversation across many of these platforms about a pressing issue of interest to your community. My next post will discuss survey widgets in more detail.
- Monitor chatter about your brand on blogs and social networks using tools like Google Blogsearch, Technorati, TwitterSearch or a customized service like ours.
Using these simple steps, you can make impressions on thousands of people per month for next to nothing. In times like these, if nothing else, can you afford not to at least follow the last step mentioned above? When you do, be sure to track your results so you can prove the return on your time investment. Do you have other suggestions for how to create a social media campaign on the cheap? Please feel free to share them here.
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Thanks for the shout out on my Debunking Six Social Media Myths piece.
I would argue that “an enthusiastic person” would need to have background in at least two of these areas: marketing, journalism, writing, search engine optimization and PR before the work you describe can actually help a brand.
And what is 10-15 hours of this superperson’s time and experience worth?
Do the math. $50K is definitely in the ballpark when you include what I was including:
- design
- IT
- PR
- SEO
Thanks B.L. I think you’re right that $50k may be in the ballpark of what this type of work is really worth, and yet for a lot of busy communications professionals with no budget for social media, squeezing it in on top of their regular responsibilities is the best they can do in this economy. That’s what I’m trying to present a blueprint for and your column gave me the idea. Thanks for reaching out.
Hi Jay, you describe a great set of social media activities here, but to do ALL of this (including video and monitoring) and to do it well, I think you’re talking about more than 10-15 hrs/week. That said, I also don’t think it has to cost $50,000, depending on the size of the brand/company or campaign. Combining more traditional PR with social media, we’ve seen some great results for much less, but you do have to pick and choose which social media activities are most suitable to the goals you’re trying to accomplish – it’s difficult to be everywhere at once in the huge social media sphere. For instance, create a plan for blogs, Twitter, and video and track how your efforts drive traffic to a website. Focus on a few things and do them well.
Monitoring social media on a regular basis to discover opportunities for engaging can help. We’ve been using Radian6 for several months with mixed results. The crux of our campaigns is solid planning and choosing the appropriate channels. Passively monitoring and engaging doesn’t cut it.
Thought you’d be interested in my recent post on our experience with social media monitoring
http://www.pageonepr.com/blogs/thepagewonders/2009/02/social-media-monitoring-radian6-or.html
David
Thanks David. Picking a few key tasks to focus on is great advice.
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Alessandra
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