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Adam Sarner, an analyst with market research firm Gartner shared some of the content he'll be presenting at the annual Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2008, (October 12-16 in Orlando, Fla.) with CNet.
75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies are eager to get involved in social-networking initiatives for marketing or customer relations purposes, but 50 percent of those campaigns will be classified as failures, predicts Sarner. What are they doing wrong?
"(Businesses) will rush to the community and try to connect, but essentially they won't have a mutual purpose, and they'll fail," Sarner said.
What does he mean by a "mutual purpose?"  Any social media campaign has to be an authentic involvement with a community. A successful campaign will serve both the company putting out the campaign and the audience interacting with it and finding that balance is not easy.
Some of the most successful viral campaigns had no business value, yet blatant marketing efforts in a community don't go down too well. So where does that leave you? Is social media just a waste of time? Will social media activities fall prey to budget cuts in the current economic squeeze? No, says Sarner.  Businesses will turn to the Web to stay in touch with consumers during a difficult financial climate. "This is going to be a lifeline," he said. "Your spirit of customers is probably the only thing you have."
Gartner's research shows that by 2012 fully half of all purchases will have some online component. That could mean searching for product reviews, reading about a new product on a blog, or comparing prices even if the purchase is ultimately made in a store. But just getting people talking isn't enough, says Sarner. You need a focused content strategy that plays to what your audience needs and wants. Once you have that you can pick your tools and methods of distribution of the content.Â
At the townhall meeting held at the eTourism Summit last week to discuss this very subject, the consensus of opinion was that this is not the time to cut back on marketing and PR. What you do need to do is use cost-effective campaigns that get results.
Vancouver BC Tourism shared how they used a Facebook group to get in touch with the folk who participate in their Dine Around promotion. A very low cost action that attracted more than 1200 people. And now they know who they are, what they like and dislike and they can market to them in the future.  Smart campaign with a mutual purpose: they wanted access to this group of people, the participants wanted to form a community and share ideas, events, reviews and images.
If you're in the LA/Orange County/East LA area, PRSA Inland Empire has an excellent line up of speakers at their social media seminar on October 15th: PR 2.0 - Breaking into the Conversation. One of the sessions is on successful social media case studies.
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