Is Your Company Ready for Social Media Marketing Campaign?

Social media is red hot right now. Left and right, companies are jumping in to take advantage of this emerging market. If you are itching to get in the game, consider this: social media marketing is not for everyone.

While browsing through the blogs, I’ve stumbled up an interesting post by John Bell, founder of the 360 Digital Influence group. John has a great list of questions to ask yourself before engaging in the social media field. Here are some of the more interesting questions you should ask yourself before starting SMM (Social Media Marketing) campaign:

Does anyone within the company already blog?

Do any of these existing bloggers post on business-related issues (vs. personal blogs)?

Have you ever published public information - done an interview, released some news, said something publicly - without prior written approval from the legal department?

Does your company reward entrepreneurial behavior from within the organization?

As you may already know, our very own Garrett French is an expert on social media. In the Winter issue of “Search Marketing Standard” magazine, he touched upon this same issue. In his article, Garrett points out which companies can benefit from the social media opportunities the most. In a nutshell, here are some of the characteristics your organization should possess:

1. Your organization already contributes to your market community through blogging, white paper publishing, research, etc. Basically, you need to be able to answer “YES” to the first three of John’s questions above.

2. You and/or your staff have time to explore social media market as a distribution platform.

3. Your company sells unique or highly fashionable products or services that create their own buzz.

This is not to say that an organization lacking a blog or highly fashionable products in its inventory can’t conduct a successful social media marketing campaign; it can. However, it is important to realize that social media marketing efforts involve much more than a few blog posts per week and an occasional podcast.