Mashable.com posted an article by Chris Allison, today called the “4 Ways to Effectively Use Social Media as a Catalyst“. His article speaks about 4 ways to which you can begin to look at the big picture and begin to put together some thoughts and ideas about how you are going to use social media, in the context of your brand and marketing goals, to maximize results.

Like I said ya gotta have a plan! This article should help you gain some perspective as to where you might want to get started.

Best Nicole

As social media marketing becomes more widely practiced, the questions of the day are less frequently focused on the benefits of social media and more often focused on its implementation. Justifying social media to superiors is no longer the marketer’s biggest challenge.

Instead, marketers are being challenged not on the potential benefits, of which there is ample evidence, but rather on how to get those benefits. Where to start?

Social Media as a Catalyst

When putting together a puzzle, it helps to take a look at the big picture on the front of the box. Likewise, when putting together a social media strategy it’s necessary to zoom out a little and examine how social media will fit into the context of your other business activities. Below are four pieces of the puzzle that brands can mesh with social media to maximize results.

1. Cause Marketing

The socialization of the web has made it evident that brands that want to succeed online must feel and act like humans, not like desperate, distant corporations. Accordingly, some social media marketers have taken on the role of teaching brands how to be human: don’t say stupid things, don’t feed the trolls, and don’t dominate the conversation – pretty fundamental stuff that somehow got lost during the incorporation process.

However, guidelines for not screwing up aren’t enough for brands to really benefit from social media. Until you bring something interesting to the table — something that inspires passion, laughter, or curiosity — nobody will care if you have a Twitter() account.

One of the most effective, simple ways to get people to care about what you’re doing is to do something worth caring about: get behind a cause. Brands have been benefiting from cause marketing for a long time, but the catalytic nature of social media has brought three additional benefits to the cause marketing table:

1. Access to increased publicity
2. The ability to be a vocal activist instead of a silent philanthropist by joining conversations
3. The ability to bring customers into the support process

Pepsi is one of the best examples of a brand that has recently seized the opportunity to leverage a mix of social media and cause marketing. Their Refresh Everything project incorporates votes from users to decide where Pepsi will donate their funds as well as a variety of other simple social media features: single sign-on, a Facebook() Fan Page, and a blog.

By involving users with a voting process, Pepsi has effectively done three things. First, instead of just doing good themselves, they’ve helped their customers do good, which helps establish a very positive brand association. They have also created a situation that will compel users to share with their friends (in order to accrue votes for the cause of their choice). Finally, they have built a feedback mechanism that will ensure the causes they support are also the most popular among their customers (which is great PR).

Brands can benefit greatly from integrating social media with cause marketing, and they can learn a lot about how to get started from the tactics that Pepsi has used.

Disclosure: Pepsi sponsored Mashable’s() NextUp NYC: The Future Journalist event.

2. The Offline World

Isolating the impact of social media to the web is an easy mistake to make. It seems natural enough to meet online goals with online activity, but the tangible world of physical objects, locations, and events can often provide a compelling medium to drive fans to engage with you online, or vice versa, you can use your social media efforts to drive activity to guerrilla marketing events like Red Bull’s stash, or simply to brick and mortar stores.

Integrating your social media efforts with real products, store locations, or activities is an important way to acknowledge that you care about the complete customer experience, and that you’re not just in the social media space because it’s popular.

Some of the most successful campaigns, such as Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice, have been focused on driving the purchase of offline products. Similarly, customer support profiles like Comcast Cares would be much less successful if they didn’t have the power to influence real offline change by working with customer support representatives that can help customers on location.

On the surface, social media may look like a simple set of social networks that people use to communicate, but when marketers look deeper they find that it presents a whole new venue for empowering all of their existing services, online as well as off.

3. Media Coverage

Though citizen journalism and user generated content have proven to be extremely powerful (Iran’s() election crisis, Barack Obama’s massive online get out the vote efforts, etc.), it is important to remember that brands can still benefit enormously from traditional media coverage.

When it comes to social media, or any marketing for that matter, brands must find ways to leverage all of their assets in the same direction. Just like the offline world can easily be used for online gain, so too can traditional media be leveraged in the new media space.

Amit Gupta, founder of several wonderful startups like Photojojo and Jelly, sheds some light on how his businesses have benefited from traditional coverage:

Mainstream press is harder to get, but still drives significant awareness, especially among ‘everyday’ people who aren’t spending all day on the internet. And the names of old media carry
significant cache, enough to drive double-digit increases in conversion rates simple because of the credibility their names lend.

I exchanged e-mails with Amit and he was kind of enough to lend some extended insight on what to expect from traditional media. TV, web, and radio are all able to generate fast, measurable results. With these mediums, people are either interested, or they aren’t. There are comparatively few lagging responses. Newspapers and magazines on the other hand, while carrying significant credibility, produce results that are harder to measure because their content is often read over days, weeks, or even months.

The ultimate success of a social media strategy depends on your ability to recognize problems and seize opportunities to solve them. When considering the needs of your campaign, whether it’s brand equity or an immediate spike in interest, consider traditional media as another tool in your toolbox that could meet those needs. However, remember that part of your strategy should involve doing, saying, or making something interesting and worth talking about. If you don’t do that, no amount of good press can save you.

4. Technology

At SoCon10, a social media conference in Atlanta, Carol Kruse (head of interactive marketing at Coke) described the pain her team went through creating a Facebook application, only to find two months later that changes in Facebook’s design would require Coke to restructure the application – a maintenance cost that hadn’t been anticipated. Having a plan in place for making technological changes on the fly is an important ingredient in the fast-paced social media world.

But technology is more than just a potential cost that bloats social media campaigns; it’s also the life that fuels them. Applications like the recently launched MySpace Fan Video are powered by collaboration between experienced creatives and programmers, not just one or the other. Thus, perhaps the most important synergy to be formed by any company delving into social media is one between their technology team, internal or external, and their marketing team driving the strategy.

There are some serious hard cold facts that point out that even the biggest brands are experiencing HUGE changes and drops in brand loyalty! Everyone should be reading this article. I hope that you will pass it on to your colleagues and friends. It is time to take note and make the changes needed—to get those customers back now. In this new economy, you want to show your customers how much you value their brand commitment, and how eager you are to make adjustments that reflect the times and the changes in their lives. You want to prepare for a committed journey with them as we move towards the future…a future where the customer is put first and foremost.

Nothing could be more important than that!

Best Nicole

Marketers are directing their 2009 budgets toward content, custom media and social media initiatives, according to a new study from online marketing resource and vendor-matching tool Junta42.

More than half—56%—of marketing and publishing decision-makers plan to increase their content marketing spending next year, Junta42 found after surveying its community of corporate marketers and publishing/agency professionals.

What’s more, a full 31% expressed their intention to increase spending on content significantly, while 25% said they planned to increase it slightly.

Even in the face of dramatic cutbacks and decreased budgets, only 4% of respondents said they planned to decrease spending on content dramatically next year, while 9% said they planned to decrease it slightly.

“These findings are an acceleration of what we’ve been seeing for the past few years,” said Joe Pulizzi, founder of Junta42 and author of “Get Content. Get Customers.”

Notably, surveyed marketers were very clear that social media will be at the top of their investment list next year.

In terms of most important products/tactics, social media–other than blogs–resonated with 68% of subscribers, followed by e-newsletters/email (60%), blogs (56%), case studies (55%), online video (51% ), white papers (46%) and microsites (43%).

“If marketers will spend less in 2009, it won’t be coming from their content development budgets,” Pulizzi said. “More and more marketing professionals now realize that tomorrow’s marketing is all about developing a conversation with customers.”

The Junta42 community is made up of both corporate marketers and publishing/agency professionals. For the study, 42% were corporate marketers, 22% were traditional publishers/media, 19% were marketing/advertising agencies, 15% were custom publishers and 3% were association marketers.

In addition, 85% of the surveyed audience makes marketing purchase decisions for their organizations.

The Junta42 email study was delivered during the first week of December. A total of 1706 subscribers were invited to take the study, of which 196 completed the survey.

IF these stats are any indication using social media tools will definitely be a successful way to start the conversation with your customers. What are you waiting for? Brand evangelists for your products and services are eagerly waiting to hear from you!

Best Nicole

Marketing Profs writes a daily blog called Get to The Point! One of today’s posts beautifully describes how understanding the ways in which your customer wants to connect with you and you with them, will help provide the pathway to the social media relationship that builds brand evangelism.

Enjoy their post. Best Nicole

Pepsi’s Scheme Fails Taste Test

By now, you’ve probably heard about a recent Pepsi outreach that delivered three packages, over the course of an hour, to 25 influential bloggers; the first two contained cans with logos from throughout the cola-maker’s history, while the last featured those with the latest design.
A note explained: “You’re part of a handful of digital and social influencers we’re reaching out to regarding a multiyear, companywide transformation.”

The delivery gimmick, which some found intriguing, didn’t pack its intended drama for a few recipients. Mack Collier, who lives in a rural area, was bemused by the silliness of having a courier sit in his driveway while waiting out the prescribed 20-minute interval between each delivery. Rohit Bhargava, meanwhile, missed it altogether—he was out of the country when the packages arrived.

Collier applauds Pepsi’s ambition, but takes issue with the initial stage of the campaign’s execution for these reasons:

“Sending bloggers stuff to get us to blog about it is soooo 2006,” he writes. “Sure it can lead to a ton of initial buzz, but if there’s no follow-up and if the buzz doesn’t lead to the start of creating connections with your customers, then it’s still money wasted.”

Companies should target online evangelists before they go after social media influencers.

In the world of social media, you’re sure to see a better ROI on time than on money.

Your Marketing Inspiration: Focus on the relationships that social media tools facilitate, not the tools themselves. “You want to use social media as a channel to better connect with your customers, as a way for you to better understand them, and for them to better understand you.”

We are going to try to provide all sorts of examples of great branding at the same time we discuss the problems, concerns and ways that companies do not speak to women or consumers in a way that encourages them to become brand evangilists.

I came across this article today in Ad Age MEDIAWORKS online. I thought this was a brilliant example of engaging and targeting consumers to build brand evangelists and sell more products.

In Japan, Uniqlo Microsite Lets Buyers Find Testimonials
Published: November 13, 2008

For a more in-depth look at this Idea of the Week and other case studies, visit Ad Age and CMDglobal’s Inspiration site.

Uniqlo wanted to sell its new Bra Top range and so recruited 300 Japanese women to represent the brand.

The 20- to 40-year-olds were filmed answering a range of questions, from their favorite food to what they liked about Uniqlo products, and the answers were then played on a microsite for like-minded women.

Filtering criteria allowed visitors to find women of a similar height, weight and shape and see how they answered the questions.

Sales of the Bra Top increased five-fold following the campaign, and at one point Uniqlo sold out all 1.7m units.

Best Nicole

Ghandi said:

“We must be the change we want to see in the world.“

As a dynamic, innovative and smart group of women we want to discuss the ways in which we can make changes and come up with new ideas, so the world begins to see us as important, modern, insightful contributors. By creating offline and online branding experiences that help you find the products and services that represent who you are, living your best life.

For me it is the not only the quality of the products that make me a brand evangelist to some of my favorite things but the customer service, attention to detail and honesty that these companies exude that make me go back to experience them time and time again.

How important they feel I am, how interested in listening to my concerns, how eager they are to make changes that affect how my challenges can be solved and how easy it is to access the things that make my life flow is what is most important to me.

We want to talk about our lives, our experiences and the products, services, events, and people that inspire us to crave more. We want YOU to tell us about the change you want to see in your world. Together we can use our voices to begin to educate the companies, products and services about how to be the change that we want to see in them. So they can be the brands, companies and ideas that help us change our world together!

Best, Nicole