Social Media 101: The First Question To Ask Yourself Before Getting Started With Social Media

By Natascha Thomson

As a social media professional at SAP, I get many questions from colleagues who are new to social media and would like to add social media to their marketing mix. The learning curve on social media is still steep for most people, and in this blog, I have aggregated the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions.
Many of my consulting engagements start with the sentence "My team wants to have a Twitter handle" or "I need to increase the number of fans for our Facebook page".
To that, there is only one answer: "Why"? And ,"Let's take a step back".
Before you get engaged in any kind of social media project, please ask yourself the following questions:
1. What are my social media objectives (these should align with your marketing, and on a higher level, your business objectives)?

• Maybe you are trying to create awareness for a product offering?
• Maybe you want to extend the reach of an event beyond a physical location?
• Maybe you are tasked to generate leads?
• Maybe...(fill in here)

The tech folks tend to over estimate the state of thinking. There is an impedance mismatch between the state of the art and the state of the buyer.

By Mark Helfen


"The tech folks tend to over estimate the state of thinking," said Kelly Dempski. "There is an impedance mismatch between the state of the art and the state of the buyer."

Dempski is the speaker at the next SVForum MarketingSIG, 6:30 on Monday, August 8 at EMC, our regular meeting place. In his presentation, titled "Social Media in the Real World," he will discuss what he has learned in his 17 years at Accenture, where he currently holds the title of Senior Director, MultiChannel Interactions R&D Group at Accenture Technology Labs.

Dempski's role at the labs is to investigate new products and ideas, targeted to keep Accenture's client base educated and ahead of the technology curve. He both produces written documents of what he learns, and presents to executives. Given the customer base of Accenture, its not surprising that the viewpoint of the executives he interacts with is different than the typical Silicon Valley crowd. The majority of Accenture's 200,000 consultants are installing and implementing IT systems at "old line" companies - CRM systems, or financial systems like SAP. A typical example might be a manufacturer, selling to other businesses. Dempski used the example of a business that sells large tanks of compressed gas.

"Its eye opening what real people say about technology trends, like social media," said Dempski. The differences are not only generational, though that's a partial explanation. Industry, location, culture, and market all can affect this. People in a "different context" have different preconceptions.

"The rest of the world is quite different than we have in the valley."

The main cause of the death of Marketing VPs are Sales VPs....

By Mark Helfen

"The main cause of the death of Marketing VP's are Sales VPs," said Dave Kellogg, speaker at the July 13 SVForum Marketing SIG.  
(You might notice that the SDForum is now the SVForum. New name, same pizza....)

Kellogg's history gives him a unique viewpoint. Starting out in marketing as a product manager, he eventually moved up the ranks and became CEO at Marklogic, a software firm.

He views marketing as a service organization. The marketing department "doesn't have to exist. It's only purpose is to make others productive," particularly sales. As soon as the marketing VP forgets this, he and his department are in trouble.

Use "gutsy, scrappy" marketing to bend Facebook to your will....

By Mark Helfen

Can you get rich using Facebook? How about not just get rich, but get rich quickly?

Well, maybe not. But Facebook can be a low cost but very effective part of your marketing strategy. You can connect to a large number of very targeted Facebook "friends," with little cash investment, and make a real bottom-line difference in your small company's finances.

So says Evan Bailyn, speaker at the next SDForum MarketingSIG meeting, June 13 at our regular meeting location, EMC. His talk is titled "How to Build a Massive Facebook Audience that Converts to Profits," which is a pretty clear explanation of what you will learn.

Bailyn, CEO and founder of First Page Sage, has shown it can be done. When I interviewed him, he said that he had started eight internet-based businesses and sold five of them, some for multiple millions. The businesses were of different types and products, but all used his expertise in Google and Facebook to find and communicate with his market.

His strategy is to "beat the system" - to go right up to the edge of Facebook or Google rules, but not cross the line. Definitely an example of guerrilla marketing. But what would you expect from someone who wrote a book called Outsmarting Google: SEO Secrets to Winning New Business. The Facebook version is in the works.

Marketing Operations can save your life. Or at least your marketing sanity.

By Mark Helfen

If you've been in marketing for a while, you know that the job can range from merely difficult, to completely impossible.

• It's hard to manage the individual parts of the marketing mix.
• It's very hard to do well
• It can range from hard to beyond hope to control, or even influence all of the other parts of your organization that have to work in sync to make your marketing strategy effective.

Or to paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, marketing gets no respect.