3 Social Media Resolutions For 2010
2009: The Year of the Social Media Revolution
Besides being the year of bailouts, Balloon Boy and Susan Boyle, 2009 will also be remembered as the year social media went mainstream. Facebook watched its membership grow by more than 200 million users; Twitter became a media darling; and big brands like Ford, Burger King and Skittles launched major social media campaigns. A March 2009 Nielson report showed social networking had overtaken email in worldwide reach. As PR pros, we learned the ins and outs of these new tools and worked diligently to reach successful integration of social media into our PR efforts. If 2009 was the year we sought to understand social media, let 2010 be the year we took charge of it. Here are three resolutions to get us started:
Commit to staying on top of social media news
If there’s one thing certain about social media, it’s that it evolves quickly. In 2010, don’t let your social media savvy expire. Stay up to date by keeping up with credible blogs (Mashable, Marketing Profs Daily Fix and PR 2.0, for starters), by following social media thought leaders (Chris Brogan, Jason Falls, Brian Solis, Deirdre Breakenridge and Danny Brown come to mind), and by expanding your local online network (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn are only the beginning). With so many ways to keep up with social media, there’s no reason to miss out on the next big thing.
Get serious about social media measurement
As PR pros, we should never forget that measurement is essential to any successful marketing campaign. Even social media campaigns should be able to demonstrate their ROI. Define which key indicators will best reveal a successful social media campaign — new fans, new followers, impressions, sales spikes, improved customer satisfaction, improved company image, etc. Then, research which tool(s) will best help you best measure your key indicators. These tools may come in the form of new services offered by well established companies (Cision, Vocus, Nielson, etc.), or they may be found in newer, more specialized businesses (Radian6, Biz 360, etc.). In 2010, what’s left of the “social-media-for-the-sake-of-social-media” movement will be forced to account for its efforts. We PR pros, of course, will be way ahead of the game.
Capture the attention of our target audiences
New mobile technologies and social networks have allowed us to digest far more content than we previously thought possible. These tools, however, have also produced an explosion of content production, further fracturing our already much-divided attention. Thus, with the increasing abundance of social media content comes the increasing scarcity of consumer attention. In 2010, how will you cut through the social media clutter and capture the limited attention of your target audiences? Easy. Give them what they want, when they want it and how they want it. Simple, right? Not really, but you’ve done it with your PR campaigns in the past and you can surely do it with your social media campaigns in the future. Do your research. Resolve to be bold and creative. Overcome your fear of becoming a social media failure, and instead realize your goals and objectives in making your campaign the next case study in successful social media marketing.
What else?
What resolutions would you add to this list? Let me know in the comments section below or on Twitter (I’m @thePRguy).