The word catalyst is a great definition for socia media these days. The dictionary defines catalyst as “something that causes activity between two or more persons or forces without itself being affected.”  There is enough evidence for most –  as to the value of social media as a key marketing channel. Most businesses understand and know about the tools most used – but where there is still a lack of clarity for many - is the implementation aspect. Many still need guidence on how to go about incorpoprating social media, so that they recive the benefits and build a community of brand evangelists that understand who and what their brand stands for. This can ensure that you are speaking to and building your “tribe members” to spread the word.

This part always leads me back to the ongoing conversation I continue to have which is strategy. I have meetings with new businesses all the time- that tell me -  they want to get stated with social media and don’t want to do any strategic planning. They just want to get on Twitter and Facebook. There is nothing wrong with this approach by the way,  BUT it can also minimize – maximizing your results and the meeting of your milestones. Some of the things to consider in a strategic plan incude your other markting intiatives and how your social media will be integrated. Are you currently using offline and in-store channels? What about the social computing behavior of your target market – maybe they don’t use Facebook or Twitter - but read blogs instead – and only from a spectator vantage point – which means they are not going to be the ones that comment. Deciphering some of the answers to these questions and many more, certainly  up the odds for your success with connecting and engaging with success.

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?

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Social Media as a Catalyst

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With this challenge in mind, it’s vital to understand that social media is neither the end nor the beginning of any marketing effort. Rather, social media is a catalyst that works most effectively when it is finely woven into the fabric of a brand’s other activity.

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.

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1. Cause Marketing

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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.

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2. The Offline World

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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.

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3. Media Coverage

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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.

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4. Technology

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Lastly, your social media strategy is inherently paired with technology. Without technology, social media cannot exist. However, technology’s role in creating a social media strategy often goes understated.

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.

When is the last time that you left your house or office without your cell phone? Or went throughout the entire day – leaving your cell phone behind on purpose? For me -my cell is my personal and business lifeline all wrapped up into one. It houses my contact list – the days of remembering a phone number are long gone, my calendar, my email, texts and the internet are all at my finger tips  – should I need to search something. My social media feeds are there too so I can Tweet and update Facbook as I move throughout my day. My alarm for the morning resides on the phone as well and yes it stays by my bed at night when I am asleep!

As your business navigates through the decision to engage in social media – you should be thinking about the ways that your customers will best engage. What are the tools that they use, where are they likely to best utilize your information to connect – not only with you – but to take the types of actions you want them to make. With so many people as connected to their cell phones as I am – it is vital for every business to be thinking about how they can best leverage mobile.

This post and video from Retails Big Blog by Ellen Davis VP and NRF spokesperson is brilliant. It focuses on one of social media’s most important tools – and substantiating the opening to this post – that this tool is becoming- not just for me – but for everyone  a conduit to engage your customers – in ways that have not yet been leveraged. Best Buy – is leading the way by – acknowledging through this video that they realize and see this as a tremendous business opportunity.

If mobile is not on your company’s radar – this video is sure to change your mind!
Best Nicole

Benson, senior director of interactive marketing at Best Buy, began her presentation at the Retail Innovation & Marketing Conference by asking people to swap cell phones with the person sitting next to them. There was a lot (and, I mean, a LOT) of hesitation, but most people followed directions. Then we were asked to trade phones with another person close by. More hesitation ensued, but most people obliged.

At my table, I ended up holding the BlackBerry of a guy I’d never met and he (gasp!) was cradling my iPhone. It made me cringe. This short exercise was a powerful reminder to me – and, likely, many other attendees – of the personal value we place on our mobile devices.

What does mobile mean to Best Buy? A tremendous business opportunity. Best Buy debuted a video during Benson’s presentation about the value of mobile – not only on Best Buy’s employees, but also on the company. Take four minutes to watch this and you’ll realize, this is a company that gets it.

For those that follow us on Twitter and Facebook - you know that yesterday I attended The Art of Marketing. It was a great event - but what I really enjoyed was the ability to SHARE with others – some of the many take-aways that I received from each speaker by Tweeting – better yet were the retweets I received from those that loved what I was SHARING. It adds a new dimension to be able to use your mobile device and be connected not just by email but in real-time to the social networks that are part of your day – to – day or I should re phrase that to say my day- to- day life.
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I got this link from Twitter via @thepowerofsmall author Lynda Thaler and CEO of  The Kaplan Thaler Group.

We are working on all sorts of digital projects these days—many of them are contests—with the plan to build a fan base, so they can begin to engage and connect with their clients one-on-one. As we continue to guide and educate our current clients with social media strategies and execution – we are always trying to sell new clients who have yet to really get engaged. As a women owned and run business – I always use the analogy that social media is a natural for women. It is focused on how we communicate. We like to tell stories and share our ideas. If we have a great experience we want the world to know and when we don’t we want the world to to know that too.
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In light of the Olympics taking place in Canada, I thought today’s post was definitely apropos! Virtual meet-ups and friendships are one of the great benefits of social media. Communities are being created in the online world and relationships are being extended into the real world. I know for myself—and many of my friends—that new friendships have begun on Facebook that have extended into the real world. Same goes for Twitter. Tweet-ups are popping up all over—where those on Twitter are getting together with their followers and fellow tweeters in real life. ING Direct Canada’s online bank has had a few “tweet-up” meet ups!
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The best way to show our readers that a serious, planned approach to social media as a key marketing channel can lead to success (when integrated with offline channels), is to provide case studies or corporate examples of triumph and prosperity.

Today’s post is going to do just that. In 2008, Starbucks (YES, I am one of their devotees ) found themselves in some serious hot water. Sales were down, there were major corporate management changes (which included Starbucks former CEO Howard Shultz returning and some management being let go), store closings, and some of the rapid rate expansion was slowed so that the company could go back to basics. The challenge? “How do they get back their relationship with their customer — the one they had when they first began?” Shultz claimed that, “Starbucks had lost its soul.”
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I think for many now jumping on the social media bandwagon, one area of measurement is based on the number of fans that one has. In some cases, it’s great to have hundreds of thousands of fans—IF you can lead them to click throughs on your site or directly track them to retweets of products and services or sharing via Facebook (from all of your friends to their friends and so on…). But many are, as in life, “fair-weather friends”: they come, look around, sign up…but don’t really engage or connect. Especially when you don’t have a strategy that is going to ensure that you connect with them for a direct call to action. Yes. You want a call to action. One that includes a mutual passion for the give and take that is going to be SHARED by your business and the friends/customers you are going to friend and follow.
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When we created SHARE, it was founded on a basic idea: that as successful, bright, creative women who are key influencers and decision makers for point of purchase (across so many categories and channels), we could really make a difference with our knowledge, based on who we are and the clients we work with. One of the reasons we focus on social media, is because of the ease in which we understand the parallel between social media and the way women naturally connect and engage with one another. Of course, we’re always clear that what is good for women is GREAT for men.
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Measurement has been at the epicenter of marketing for many, many years. Traditional marketing and advertising as well as public relations all have concise ways of measuring the success of a campaign. That success becomes  an ROI for the client – as is mandated by the goals and milestones created for their brand, products and or services.
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Much of the work we have been doing in our company, SHARE, has focused on social media and finding ways to leverage engagement for clients and their customers via Facebook and Twitter. Many want low cost ideas that will engage their potential friends and followers in ways that are meaningful to them. Of course, they want the ideas to be unique, out of the box and promise a gazillion friends. Many of these companies don’t plan for or strategize how they are going to keep those friends when the campaign or promotion is finished. How are YOU going to keep those friends—that collected their coupons for free offers of your products or services—from ending their relationship when your campaign ends?
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