David Kirkpatrick

Book Giveaway: The Zen of Social Media Marketing (2012 Edition)

March 29th, 2012

This week’s MarketingSherpa Book Giveaway features The Zen of Social Media Marketing (2012 Edition) by Shama Hyder, CEO, Marketing Zen Group.

I’ve been reading through this volume for the last several weeks, and I just keep finding new ideas and actionable advice for social media marketers. I thought one point Shama made was particularly interesting:

In this book, I’ll be using the words “customer” and “client” interchangeably to refer to both, because there isn’t much difference between them when it comes to using social media marketing techniques: you can ATTRACT, CONVERT and TRANSFORM both with the same material.

 

Instead of providing more of what I’ve been enjoying, I decided to call on a much more expert source …

 

Shama’s 5 takeaways

For MarketingSherpa readers, Shama provided her five main takeaways from this latest edition of her book:

1.    The #1 reason people fail at social media marketing is that they don’t have a solid foundation.

They don’t have a brand, and they don’t understand the outcome they provide. Companies focus too much on how they do something versus what it gets their clients. And, they have absolutely no way of differentiating themselves from the competition.

Social media is the ultimate amplifier. If you have a good product or service, it will be amplified until it is perceived as great. If you have a shoddy product to begin with, that will also be amplified.

 

2.    Traffic is nice but should not be the only goal of social media marketing.

Some people out there look at social media marketing only as a means of attracting traffic to their websites. Although traffic is a great goal and easily measurable, it should not be your only goal.

Remember, you can and should use social media to transform as well. It is a great way to share your stories, listen to feedback, and cultivate relationships with potential customers and future partners and vendors.

 

3.    Facebook advertising should be fresh, based on actions, and constantly monitored:

    • Change content and creative frequently (about once a week) to keep your ads fresh for viewers who will see them repeatedly.
    • The CPC (cost-per-click) method has been much more cost-effective than the CPM (cost-per-thousand) model, which is based on impressions.
    • You can share your account activity with colleagues or clients by going to “Ads,” then “Settings,” and adding permissions. Never leave these unattended. This is your money hard at work, so watch your bids, your budget and your overall performance to get the most bang for your buck.

 

4.    The Power of Web Video: Why bother with online video?

In large part, it’s because that vast majority of people, when given the choice, prefer to watch rather than read.

In fact, a 2007 study by the National Endowment for the Arts reports that “on average, Americans aged 15 to 24 spend almost two hours a day watching TV, and only seven minutes of their daily leisure time on reading”.  And you can bet that Web video is only further fueling this “watch vs. read” scenario … across all age groups.

 

5.    If you have a Facebook page, keep interaction consistent and high.

This is key to landing in people’s news feeds. A report by PageLever recently showed that most pages only reach 3.5% to 7% of their fans. Why? They don’t show up in their news feed.


Related Resources:

Enter this week’s Book Giveaway for your chance to win one of five copies of Shama’s The Zen of Social Media Marketing (2012 Edition)

Subscribe to MarketingSherpa Best of the Week email newsletter – Get notified of a new marketing book giveaway every week, plus receive our top marketing case studies and research

A Guide to Creating and Using Facebook Interest Lists

Social Media Marketing: 9 tactics for B2B social channel advertising

Social Media Marketing: How does Google+ fit into the social media puzzle?

Getting Started with Social Media Marketing: How one company went from 0 to 630,000 Facebook post views

Marketing Research Chart: To what extent are marketers integrating social media?

Social Media Marketing: An early look at how marketers can use Pinterest

Social Media Marketing: Going viral is so easy it’s hard

Webinar Replay: How to Integrate Social Media/SEO to Drive More Leads and Increase Marketing ROI

Social Media Marketing: Opportunity knocks worldwide

David Kirkpatrick

About David Kirkpatrick

David is a reporter for MarketingSherpa and has over twenty years of experience in business journalism, marketing and corporate communications. His published work includes newspaper, magazine and online journalism; website content; full-length ghosted nonfiction; marketing content; and short fiction. He served as producer for the business research horizontal at the original Office.com, regularly reporting on the world of marketing; covered a beat for D/FW TechBiz, a member of the American City Business Journals family; and he provided daily reporting for multiple LocalBusiness.com cities. David’s other media and corporate clients include: USA Today, Oxford Intelligence, GMAC, AOL, Business Development Outlook and C-Level Media, among many others.

Categories: Social Networking Evangelism Community Tags: , , , , , ,



  1. April 2nd, 2012 at 06:40 | #1

    Great post. I totally agree with the statement about traffic. It is important but shouldn’t be the main goal in social media strategy. Engagement we can gain by being a part of social media will bring traffic sooner or later.

We no longer accept comments on the MarketingSherpa blog, but we'd love to hear what you've learned about customer-first marketing. Send us a Letter to the Editor to share your story.