Making Time for Social Media Marketing

By Beth J. Bates, New Media Special Correspondent

I was recently presenting a workshop on social media for business and was asked the question, “How much time can I expect to spend on my social media marketing?” It’s a valid question and one that gets asked all the time. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to answer.

The short answer is “quite a bit” if you truly want to keep a consistent line of communication with your customers. But what is harder to explain is that social media doesn’t have to be a time suck if you spend your time wisely.

Read Full Text

How One Company Assessed ROI on Social Media

By Beth J. Bates, New Media Special Correspondent

In the past, I’ve written about what to expect when attempting to determine your social media ROI. I still believe that results are largely qualitative and for some companies difficult to assign a number. However, I found a great example of putting the numbers to the test.

Read Full Text

Budget Spent on Social Media (Word-of-Mouth) Marketing Growing

By Beth J. Bates, New Media Special Correspondent

Despite an uncertain economy, spending on word-of -mouth (WoM) marketing (including social media) rose 14.2% to $1.54 billion in 2008 according to research from PQ Media and is on target to grow another 10.2% this year. This includes budgets spent on tools like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

PQ Media defines WoM marketing as an “alternative marketing strategy” driven by “brand ambassadors” (evangelists) online and offline.

Read Full Text

Is Social Media Old News?

By Beth J. Bates, New Media Special Correspondent

I’ve been speaking with several colleagues recently who think that social media has run its course — that no new technology is likely to emerge that makes social media significantly better without fundamentally changing the face of the web as we know it.

I understand this point of view, but I don’t think the phenomenon is in danger of dying just yet. This thing we call social media has encompassed audio, video, blogging, micro-blogging, community building, email … the list goes on. What could possibly come next? I communicate through Twitter, email, Facebook, instant message, SMS texting and social communities, and I’m having a hard time keeping up. But even if the rate of technological change is slowing down, social media is here to stay. On any given day, I use a wide variety of social media tools, and I can’t imagine giving them up:

Read Full Text

Facebook vs. Google – Who Will Win?

By Beth J. Bates, New Media Special Correspondent

Hear the clicking of keyboards and the droning of hard drive fans? That’s the sound of Google and Facebook in a head-to-head grudge match. Each giant thinks that it has the edge on its competitors, but are they really comparing apples and oranges?

Read Full Text

Developing a Social Media Policy

>By Beth J. Bates, New Media Special Correspondent

I’ve had several discussions recently with both colleagues and clients about the importance of a social media policy. For smaller companies, creating a policy may not be as critical, but at some point, if you are participating in social media you may want to have a policy. Here are a few questions to ask yourself.

Read Full Text