Is Your Social Media Lumped In With Marketing?

It’s true to say that companies either ‘get’ Social Media or they don’t. As brows furrow over trying to define whether it should be budgeted under online marketing or PR, and who should be ‘looking after it’, eyebrows shoot upwards as questions of ROI become answers in KPI!

Business owners like straightforward definitions, preferably ones that translate to measurable traffic growth on SEO keywords, website conversions, sales figures and bottom lines!

The likelihood is that social media will be most understood as a combination of marketing and publicity rather than a ‘conversation’, or loose engagement whose principle aim is not to sell a product or service, but simply interact, offering freely shared info, ideas and data.

But this won’t wash with business owners and their Sales Directors who judge a successfully positioned brand identity by monthly sales enquiries and orders taken. After all, as often argued, if their PPC campaigns are already, successfully bringing in traffic -  with a readily measurable return – and email marketing newsletters are relatively low cost, where does social media fit in, and why bother with Twitter, etc??

However, social media is not just about Twitter! The quality content, link building value to both Google and human visitor alike, across all communication platforms, is now an important signifier of online presence. The success of harnessing social engagement is as much to do with defining purpose, i.e. what a company wants to achieve, and interacting with the appropriate channels to achieve realistic objectives.

The distinction between social media as marketing or PR should be made at the outset rather than just to lump in with sales and marketing because it can’t be readily assigned.

Social Media can be involved as marketing strategies if the purpose is to increase traffic and sales, brand exposure and product launches. Key is the online conversation, which builds up crucial feedback and ideas for product or business development and which will establish relationships and connections with potential customers (fans or followers).

If the aim is to use social media within PR campaigns, then this would include the posting of latest company news, blogs and articles, acting as an official source of company information and a “quick response” to any immediate customer comments and issues. The key here is to keep in touch with how the brand is being perceived and commented upon by a company’s audience segment.