Why do today’s companies use social media? Well, the initial response is to drive sales, right? Yes and no. If that’s the objective, the quality of your social engagement won’t go very far. The objective is engagement, interactivity, transparency, and creating an inbound marketing space that allows your customers to come and go as and when they choose, on their time, and creating a brand they know and trust. And yes, in the end, supporting your bottom line.

A recent digital readiness report states 18% of marketing decision makers have no interest whatsoever in traditional marketing. As an integrated marketing agency, The Savy Agency loves this. It shows that a good percentage of businesses are embracing digital fully and moving towards an inbound driven marketing approach. Kudos to them, and we’re certain this is providing returns. Other data in that survey adds: a majority agree that knowledge of social networks (80%), blogging, podcasting and RSS (87%), and micro-blogging (72%) is either important or very important when it comes to PR and marketing.

Social media applied strategically in PR and marketing helps a brand grow due to social media’s referential nature – links, sourcing and aggregation. As more companies jump onboard in today’s already crowded digital space and as these channels continue to rise in popularity and influence, businesses staking their claim in social engagement sooner rather than later will reap the rewards.

Know Where You’re Going if You’re Going to Get There
No matter what your social media strategy, you need to have a clearly defined goal of what you’re trying to accomplish. This will help track ROI from your social media investment and help direct future investments. The best social media strategies tie goals to calls to action. Think about where you’re going and what you’re trying to achieve before jumping into social engagement. Ask yourself whether the goal you started with is where you ended up. If not, be prepared to revisit, revise and recast your social strategy. After all, the social web is dynamic and ever changing, so shouldn’t are social web strategies be?

Ford’s Social Engagement – Quite the Fiesta
Ford’s chosen the term “movement” for their social engagement. And given the fact that they’re moving forward, literally, it works. Ford’s brand and content alliance team likened their social presence to a social movement – which, as defined by dictionary.com, is a diffusely organized or heterogeneous group of people or organizations tending toward or favoring a generalized common goal. What’s Ford’s social engagement goal with the Fiesta? The collective awareness of and excitement around the vehicle. Sounds like a fiesta that’s working for Ford.

Great, now where do we begin? Although strategies vary across industries and businesses, your social engagement rules may look something like this:

- Focus on quality useful content, optimize it, engage on social networks, and share that content on those networks.

- No matter what you feel your company, product or personal brand’s best features are, no matter how well you communicate between your business, your market or your peers, remember to write, type and speak how your customers write, type and speak.

- Before jumping out there, understand what drives kinship with your brand, and seek to engage with your customers in ways that fosters that kinship in small bites, every day.

- Remember that measurement is important. After finding your goals, find ways to measure your efforts, and then work to succeed.

Having an effective social engagement strategy with your PR and marketing efforts and the patience to see it pay off will see returns in 2010, far greater than traditional PR can offer, and from what it appears, is not going away any time soon.

As always, have fun out there
The Savy Agency