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So why is it that the big blue chips just don’t get it when it comes to promoting their company via the latest social media? The main problem is that they don’t take the time to ‘learn’ the medium. You can’t just open a Stumble Upon account, give thumbs up to 100 random sites and then start requesting everyone to stumble your site or spam random bloggers, “hey, can you blog about my product? I’ve never read your blog, never commented, actually I don’t even know your name, but my company is a perfect fit for your audience.”

1) Learn the medium. The first step is not only to learn the medium, but use it. Become a power user of the medium before you attempt to exploit it for commercial use or self promotion.

2) Get an outside opinion. If you are OLD or un-connected to the trends, ask someone who is connected to review your ‘viral’ idea before you unleash it. (And before you flame me, I consider myself old. I don’t get why kids where their jeans half way down their ass, but maybe it is cool? But it also doesn’t mean you should!)

3) ‘In’ terms go ‘out’ Fast. If you think a term is ‘cool’ it is already too late and you can’t use it in your marketing pitch. (Example Gwen Stefani using the word ‘Mash-up’ in the HP commercial. Too late sounds corny)

4) Let others test it. If a new form of advertising shows up, don’t jump on the bandwagon to be cutting edge. Let others burn through cash to see if it works. (ie. Facebook advertising :)

5) Bribe with Caution. OK, everyone has a price, but most people have some level of morals, or at least think they do. So if you want to give something to someone in exchange for getting them to endorse your product - do it like the pros do. Sponsor them.

Other great articles:

Successful Social Marketing

I was at a great session at SXSW last week called “The Worst Ten Social Media Ad Campaigns of 2007″ and although I didn’t agree with all of their choices, (I thought the beer ad rocked :) I completely agreed with the overall message of the session; that you need to tread lightly when planning a ‘viral’ campaign as it can badly backfire and that you can’t force a conversation down someone’s throat if they are not listening to you.

The funniest one and the overall winner was a campaign gone wrong from HP where they had a women get her kids to take a actual hammer to the competitions camera and smash it. The kids were both toddlers which made the brainwashing even more horrifying.

My favourite (or least favourite) and also the runner up, was the Cisco ‘human network’ campaign. I’m really glad they chose this one, as I thought it was a painfully forced attempt at getting the blogosphere and Wikipedia users to want to talk about a slogan.

The panel consisted of Henry Copland, Steve Hall, Jeff Jarvis, Rebecca Lieb, and Charlotte Selles.I think they did an excellent job on this panel. It was funny, insightful and interactive and it was also refreshing that they actually brought and showed all the examples that they references. There is nothing worse than have someone go, “you remember that viral video, the one from Dove”, or” the one where that chick cut off her hair” and half the audience going’ huh’?

Stay tuned for my next blog post. “Social Media Advertising - Why big companies just don’t get it”

#1 Change up your creative often: This one is the most important, so I started with #1 first. ‘Ad blindness’ is a common fact with any type of advertising whether it is big billboard on the side of a building or an ad on the homepage of your website. Frequent visitors are going to notice something different about the site if you have a new advertiser with a new banner ad, once they have seen the ad several times or even several dozen times they will start to ignore it, moreover, actually not even see it anymore.

#2 Rotate different ads: This is an alternative to actually replacing an ad, try just rotation multiple ads in the one position. Most publishers should be able to rotate multiple creatives automatically for you within their ad server. Test out 4 different ads for a few weeks and use the one with the highest CTR on that site and others.

#3 Use tracking URL’s: If you’re not sure what traffic is coming from which ad, they you really won’t be able to tell which campaigns are effective. One simple software package is http://www.eztrackz.com/. At the very basic level at least create a reference tag (?ref=) for the URL you use for your ad campaigns. Anything after the question mark won’t affect the URL that the click goes to, but it will show up in your referral logs. (example: http://www.b5media.com?ref=advertisespace)

#4 Know the Blog: Make sure that the ‘readers’ of that blog are the right demographic for your product. Ask yourself ‘who reads this blog?” Sometimes the readers of the blog are more comprised of your competitors instead of your potential customers. Get as much information about the audience as you can.

#5 Get Above the Fold: Don’t get lost on the page, or way down the side bar. The majority of the blog readers are coming to the homepage, and reading the 1st post. If you can’t see your ad when the page first loads, neither can you customers.

#6 Don’t forget the value of branding: Every marketer is always so focused on clicks, CTR & CPC, but don’t forget about the ad impressions. Almost all forms of more traditional advertising are still about ‘how many people’ have actually seen your ad. Blog readers are a little more savvy than the average Internet user, so even though they may not be clicking as much, they do see your ad, and they are remembering your brand.

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