The Speed of Social Media Marketing

For those of us who are more accustomed to traditional media marketing and advertising like radio, print, television, internet, it is not always easy to quickly make sense of Web 2.0 and social media marketing using tools like blogs, social networks, Twitter or Bigtreetop. One very big difference is the cycle of impact that a typical social media effort will follow. Traditional marketing often follows something like the blue curve in the chart below, where a big media and public relations push generates a great deal of quick impact as customers learn about the company or the product, and make their decisions to or not to buy. The impact, though, starts to fade relatively quickly after the initial push.

A social media effort, on the other hand, usually starts off relatively slowly as a business begins to share its thoughts, ideas and goals with the customer community, inviting customers to join in the discussion. Over time, however, the impact of a social media effort begins to increase more quickly as the members of the community begin to participate more in the conversation and in inviting their friends to be a part of it as well. Eventually, if the organization puts in its time early, the community becomes practically self-sustaining as more and more people continue to contribute.

(note: this chart is not based on actual numbers – just used to illustrate the difference)

If you are at the beginning of your use of social media, therefore – just starting your blog, or a Twitter account or your BigTreetop Treetop, it’s important to remember that:

1. you should expect to put in some early work yourself, but that you will see powerful, long-lasting results later if you stay focused
2. you may want some sort of a mix of traditional and social media marketing to both raise initial community awareness – but then to sustain that awareness effectively over time
3. the later parts of the cycle can bring very large ROI (return on investment) as the community begins to do the marketing for you via word-of-mouth