For the past 3 years, social media has been all the rage in online marketing. It's easy to see why...the marketing channel opportunities and results that social media provides are cost-effective, traceable and immediate. While I'm undoubtedly a believer in utilizing social as a marketing strategy, I can't help but wonder... What the hell happened to email?
I was recently contracted as the Social Media Marketing Manager for a celebrity news startup to handle their social presence and blog network. I have a nice budget to build and maintain their Facebook, Twitter, Google+, social Q&A, and bookmarking networks and have so far succeeded. My next hurdle (that to be perfectly honest) I can't quite jump yet, is to grow them. The communities are there and no one- except us- is talking.
Why? Hmmm... well it's certainly no surprise that our brand is not a household name. No one who wasn't told to would even think to type in our company name to find us. Aside from the awesome, keyword-rich and searchable social content we share daily, we aren't giving people the opportunity to drop in and meet us. So what can we do to promote our fancy new social networks?
This is where I think email is increasingly being overlooked. And I have a sneaky feeling by more people than my client. For the past few years we've all been focusing more on creating online communities and dropping links rather than the methods we use to drive people to them. And I think email is the most effective strategy to use to accomplish this. Why do we have a signup form on our website if we aren't going to use it?
I understand that after years of telesales, spam email and black hat tactics, we've had a need for permission-based marketing. And social media, like a consumer's knight in shining armor, has come to fill it. But why neglect a strategy that's been so effective in driving results just because consumers don't like to be bothered? That's what the opt-out button is for, isn't it?