In the following white paper, the first in a monthly series, Steve Rubel, Edelman Digital’s SVP/Director of Insights, draws on members of the Edelman team, as well as research, to highlight five digital trends to watch for 2009.
It wasn’t too long ago when marketing was about talking to customers, and corporations got their message across through repetition, repetition, repetition. But over the last couple years, the rise of Web 2.0 tools and social media has fundamentally changed the relationship between corporations and their customers. Consumers are now also producers, writing blogs and creating user-generated videos; they connect with each other through social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. And now, they want to connect with companies too.
With the downturn in the economy encompassing nearly every aspect of our lives, businesses large and small are feeling the pinch. MarketingSherpa recently published a survey stating that over 60% of large companies are planning on slashing their marketing budgets significantly this year.
Cision and Don Bates of George Washington University conducted an online survey of Print and Web journalists from September 1, 2009, to October 13, 2009, to measure use of, and attitudes toward, social media for researching and reporting stories. Social media is defined as blogs, social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, microblogging sites such as Twitter, photo/video sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr, and review sites or web discussion forums such as eopinions.com. Results are based on 371 responses.
Social media marketing (SMM) gets a lot of press these days – and companies are feeling pressure to jump on the band- wagon. But if you’re like many marketers, you may be unclear about the benefits of SMM and how, exactly, you should use it to your best advantage. Without a clear strategy and specific goals and objectives, SMM can be a low-ROI time sink and it may undermine your other marketing efforts – even email. While email marketing and SMM can be a dynamic duo, you need to ensure these two powerhouse marketing tactics are working together in order to achieve results that are greater than the sum of their parts.
The emergence and increasing usage of social media and other Web 2.0 tools has dramatically altered the ways in which companies interact with their customers. For instance, buying advice, product information and technical help is increasingly being disseminated from consumers to other consumers, in some cases without involvement or oversight by the provider. Clearly, this shift presents both opportunities and risks to companies.
In the last 18 months, the social media phenomenon has delighted, confounded and concerned marketers and advertisers all around the globe. They have had to learn quickly that the different ways consumers access the internet across multiple time zones, networks and devices is forcing them to change the way they do business.