Natalie Myers

Social Media Trend 2009: Optimize

February 27th, 2009

Client-side marketers are optimizing social-media efforts this year, says Karen O’Brien, Partner, Interactive Services, Crimson Consulting. I asked Karen to describe the social-media trends among her big-brand clients.

Optimization is a big trend, she says.

Companies are optimizing social media by:

o setting standards and goals about how many members, RSS subscribers, friends, etc. they’d like to have on social-media channels

o setting standards and goals about conversations they want to target on social networks

o consolidating multiple presences on social networks, such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace (often, big companies have several profiles on various social networks, each profile representing a different product line, brand, or service)

“From a customer standpoint, it’s confusing to see a bunch of different [presences] unless they’re clearly labeled,” Karen says.

About 70% of consumers consider social-media sites to be sources of information that will influence purchasing decisions, according to research data in MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Social Media Marketing & PR Benchmark Guide.

Now is more important than ever to optimize. Make sure your brand is not only meeting its goals, but also consolidating its social-media presence and clearly labeling each one.

Natalie Myers

About Natalie Myers

Natalie Myers writes for MarketingSherpa’s Great Minds and Content Biz newsletters. She covers a broad array of topics for Great Minds, regularly interviewing thought leaders and experienced marketers about innovative or highly successful marketing strategies. For Content Biz she focuses specifically on online subscriptions models, including anything you pay for to read, listen to, watch, rent (as in Software as a Service models), etc.

She writes blog posts about topics relating to her beats, including useful information from interviews that doesn’t make it into an article.

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  1. Head Alienst
    February 28th, 2009 at 11:58 | #1

    Natlie, great post. Advertisers often fail to realize the advantages of new and hip marketing outlets until it’s too late. Well, it’s never really too late with things like social marketing. However, there is something to be said for staying on the front end of innovation.

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