Until you have squeezed significant value from Facebook, forget all the other social marketing channels.

By Mark Helfen

Social media marketing is all Facebook. Forget the others.

Or so says Justin Kistner, speaker at the next SVForum MarketingSIG meeting, October 10 at our regular place, EMC. His topic will be Feeding the Beast - Taking Advantage of Facebook's New Marketing Opportunities.

Kistner is Director of Social Products at Webtrends, and was a key player in developing their Facebook Analytics products. He will be joined by Hope Frank, Webtrends Chief Marketing Officer.  Webtrends has a range of marketing and analysis products, including a free version that can be used by small startups he describes as the "Swiss army knife" or social marketing tools.

Kistner has been around the internet marketing world for a while, starting out as a blogger attempting to get noticed, eventually helping other companies with the same problem, then on to Search Engine Optimization. When Facebook first was available, he "hated" it, and compared it to the "internet on training wheels."

You would "be surprised by the degree of listening involved" in your social media strategy. You don't just "deposit information," it's a conversation

By Mark Helfen


You would "be surprised by the degree of listening involved" in your social media strategy. You don't just "deposit information," it's a conversation.

So says John Thyfault, speaker at the next MarketingSIG meeting. Thyfault is Vice President Search Engine and Social Media Marketing at Beasly Direct Marketing. His topic will be Search and Social: Making the Sum Greater Than the Parts.

The meeting will be on Monday, September 12 at our regular EMC location. Please sign up in advance on our Meetup page - a requirement of EMC security.

Thyfault has been at Beasly Direct for 5 years, originally managing their Search Engine Marketing practice. But it turns out that there is a lot of synergy between search engine optimization and using social media for promotion. Helping clients with both is his current focus.

Social Media marketing, if done properly "naturally reinforces your search engine ranking," said Thyfault. Mentions of your product or company on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin in and others increase the "social authority" of your web site, and can get noticed by Google and other search engines. The effect can be long term, or immediate. Google can "quickly pick up" mentions on social media and can change search ranking.

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.