Seth Godin

Do Corporate Giants Really Know About This Social Media Marketing Thing?

Posted by Jay_Dutton on January 10, 2009   |   No Comments

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Of course corporate giants like Coca-Cola and Comcast know about social media marketing and its potential benefits. If you’ve heard about it, surely they have right?

Another fellow blogger, Peter Kim, like Seth Godin, gave his personal list of most popular blog posts for 2008.  The most popular blog post of 2008 provided an extensive list of companies that are using social media marketing tactics and how.
I wanted to post on this because Peter Kim and his contributors do a great job of providing examples of social media marketing tactics being used by a long list of companies. 

But I think the real question is, how successful are these tactics? I think the question of whether social media will work for one company over another is best answered by asking and then answering two more questions:

  • 1. Does the company have a long-term strategy in place for online marketing and, if so, does social media fit into that strategy?
  • 2. Does the company have the proper ingredients required for social media marketing to be successful?

Going further on question number two. What are the ingredients required for social media marketing to be successful? One of these essential ingredients is having something that people think is worth talking about.

Let’s face it. Its probably going to be pretty hard for Clorox to pull off their social media tactic, Dr. Laundry! Why? Because how much do people really care about laundry? And this is precisely what social media is about. Getting people to care about something enough to talk about it.

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Online Marketing Tactics – How Do They Fit Into Your Online Strategy?

Posted by Corey_Curwick on January 10, 2009   |   No Comments

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One of my favorite blog posts of 2008 came from marketing blogger and author, Seth Godin. The particular post I’m referring to actually got on his own list of favorite posts from his personal blog in 2008.

The title of the post is, ‘The Secret of the Web’. (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/08/the-secret-of-t.html). Catchy title eh? Needless to say, I read it. In the post Seth says, “The irony of the web is that the tactics work really quickly.”

The tactics Seth refers to are online marketing tactics. Seth also adds that, although tactics work really quickly, “..its the strategy that is the hard part, not the tactics.”

I tend to agree with Seth on this point. Tactics can be successful very quickly, yielding tangible results. However, tactics can also fail very quickly and yield no results. For this reason, the real key for making any online business a success is to put a long-term online marketing strategy in place and stick to it.

With so many online technologies that come and go, new tactics, if tried, must be measured against something that is constant. With no long-term online marketing strategy to measure new online tactics against, you’re essentially just shooting in the dark expecting to hit your target. Short-term tactics with no strategy base can sometimes even hurt your brand or kill off customers.

Because I have tried random online marketing tactics with former businesses, I understand how frustrating this can be. I’ve also seen the other side of the coin. I’ve worked with multiple companies that have a clear online marketing strategy in place. Tactics, if they didn’t fit into the long-term strategy, were simply not used.

After seeing the success of these companies in the online realm, I am convinced that sticking to a long-term marketing strategy is key for the success of any business online.

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