Don’t Integrate Social Media With Traditional Marketing — Make Money Today Instead

Need to integrate social media with traditional marketing activities?  Get the job done by realizing and acting on 2 facts: traditional marketing concepts and constructs still create successful outcomes and the all web is a social media.  Follow me and I’ll show you how to optimize social media with traditional strategies in a way that creates quick results — more sales and leads.

Here’s what I’ll pitch you to get the job done:  put integration on the back-burner.  Replace it with a better objective.  I’ll give you compelling reasons why to do this; proof that not integrating social media is the way to go (for most of us) and finally I’ll illustrate with a case study.  I’ll provide living proof.  Beware though,  consultants and gurus may not care for what I’m dishing out.

Who’s integrating and why?

Integration is a logical concept.  If something is new it should be integrated with what already exists.  It’s a natural thing to do.  When a newborn child is brought into a family, it’s time to integrate.  Heh… and that can be a challenge for sure with existing siblings.  But does this reasoning make it right for your business?

As part of a book project and marketing leadership speaking, I’m researching the true trailblazers — many of whom keep quiet when it comes to how they create results using social media… and Web marketing in general.  The theme that keeps recurring is this:

They don’t integrate “new strategies” with old.  They take time-tested direct response marketing concepts (best practices) and apply them to new digital technologies that will likely produce a meaningful, measurable result — a goal within the context of their business.

Remarkably successful marketers are operating under the assumption that “social media” is not really new.  All of the Internet is a social media and it always has been. They’re not integrating in hopes of optimizing under some hocus pocus theory or logical assumption.  They’re making sales and/or generating leads today,  I’ll discuss how they’re doing it.

All media is “social media”

But first there’s a problem, Houston.  Let’s knock this out quickly.  Use of the term “social media” prevents clarity and clarity prevents action… and action prevents improvement.

Think about it.  We use all forms of media “socially.”  Consider how we use a newspaper clipping or a telephone.  Now think about email.  We share (re-distribute, forward), argue, discuss, lash out at, lament over, compliment, barter and agonize via these things… these media.

If we can agree that all media is social (especially if it’s digital — it’s hyper-social) then we can likely agree that “social media” is really a poor choice of words that needs to be — well, killed.  And for some very strategic reasons.  It prevents clarity and clarity prevents action… and action prevents improvement.  The continued use of the words “social media” is part of a current raging debate (see link above).

Robert Bacal, successful author and CEO of Bacal & Associates shares this bit of wisdom recently at Rob Key’s recent piece on the need to stop using the term ‘social media.’

Social media has never been driven by function and purpose but by buzz and mass popularity (with a few exceptions). That’s because, in part, there are no new functions or purposes because social media is not a quantum leap. It’s barely a stagger forward. What separates it now from what has come before is that it got buzz, got cool, got popular.

It’s a “tool” looking for a function.

My point: Thinking that “social media” is something really techie, revolutionary  and cutting-edge-new makes us think and act like we’re clueless as marketers — when we’re clearly not.  A majority of us know good marketing. We’re just overly enthusiastic about social media.

And part of this enthusiasm is being fed by consultants and solution providers who fuel the fire of our very legitimate excitement.  We’re giddy, a little bit gullible and with good reason.  The result: sometimes we become tools of the tools themselves.  And I hate being called a tool.

But…

Marketing hasn’t changed.  Consumers haven’t changed — other than spending less. The rules governing our businesses have not changed. This economy is certainly spotlighting that fact.  What has?  Our environment.

There is no “digital revolution”… just an evolution.  Can we agree now that the “is social media a fad or is it a game-changer?” dust has settled?

Integrate later — make sales today

What?!  I thought this was about how to integrate “social” with the rest of mainstream marketing.  Well, yes… it is.  Bear with me.  Before we strive to integrate, traditional “old school” marketing is where we should be looking for answers for “what works” in social media marketing.

And isn’t that what we’re really after — optimum performance of all marketing programs?  But by making a bunch of things that aren’t (yet) optimized themselves work together harmoniously — is that really going to produce a better result?

The premise I’m operating under is that the “integration discussion”  is not a valid one, not yet.  First things first, let’s get better at optimizing results of what we’ve been given to work with — “traditional” web marketing strategies.

Put integration on the back-burner.  Replace it with a better objective.  Find ways to improve ROI of your current marketing tools (Web and traditional).  To…

Attract unqualified customers (who will eventually buy), keep them “engaged” with digital content “long enough” so you can “be there” when they’re ready to buy. Then pounce with a compelling call to action.

Wouldn’t that improve your job security?  Your net worth?  Your profit?

And in days ahead, we’ll explore how to do this.  Sound good?  Sound social?  Sounds productive to me… more so than working on “integrating” based on some consultant’s or vendor’s presumed outcomes.

E-mail is ‘social media’

Email works.  It’s also a known entity.  But there’s a lot of discussion all over the web and at conferences about the interplay between email and “social media.” A lot of insisting that one affects the other and circumstantial proof offered up as reasoning behind, of course, the need to integrate these new “social doo-dads” with the old.  If we can do that we’ll unlock… we’ll open the floodgates to… well, you know.

I say stop the madness.  Email is social.  Treating it in any other way is laying obstacles where they’re not needed.

Experts have all kinds of analysis on why and how this “new thing” impacts the old tactics.  There’s an incessant need to pontificate often driven by vendors who sell solutions across both “new” and “old” — or who offer the ability to integrate them.  So the “experts” (vendors) invent some reasoning why that has something to do with ROI — as they define it.

But you’re too smart for this charade.  That’s why you read ReveNews!

So I’ll prove to you that the need to integrate is largely one that makes little sense — it’s not needed.  It’s based on “social media” being some kind of new “thing” out there — a thing that doesn’t really exist beyond technology that connects all of us more ubiquitously.

Along the way, I’ll show how email is an effective “social media.” It’s old school direct response marketing but it is a social device by nature.  You cannot “un-socialize” email.  It can often be super-charged when combined with emerging things like video, blogs, social networks, Twitter — “social media.”

Here’s what we’ll cover.    I’ll also throw in a few case studies — one from eastern Europe that will astound you and inspire you and make you proud to be an online marketer.   You’ll learn how to:

• Acquire new customers with “ethical bribes”
• Use content and a publishing model to net sales you’d otherwise not get – and make a profit
• Grow your e-mail prospect list organically using a simple sweepstakes promotion
• Generate incremental web sales (sales outside of what your catalog, broadcast ads, etc. generate demand for)
• Take what you already know works and apply it to make social media pay dividends.

See you next time and I look forward to your comments and feedback on what I’m sharing.