The Morrison Agency. Atlanta Advertising + Digital Agency

The other day, I was on the phone with a client, and the question was asked: “we get that social media is important, however we can’t figure out how you actually go about monetizing it!”

Good question. Tricky answer.

I tend to follow the belief that social media works in three forms:

1. Socially – friend to friend
2. Promotionally -as a tool, in conjunction with an overarching promotional campaign
3. Proactively – a way to reach out, and build your brand

Let’s take a minute and go through each one of these, albeit at a high level.
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As you might assume, I spend a good bit of my time developing, managing, and reviewing internet marketing and advertising campaigns for our clients. In most cases, these clients have a solid grasp on the world – and metrics – of these programs. You know the ones I’m talking about, the one’s with cool abbreviations like: CPC, CTR, Conv, Impr, and others. We talk about the performance of these ads or programs, based on the number of users who click our add, complete our predefined goals, the total number of visitors to the campaign site, or whether or not they flow through the funnel we set up for them. 

Or maybe we’re talking about social media campaigns, and worrying about the number of friends, or followers of our associated Twitter profiles, Facebook Fan pages, etc. We get so caught up in these numbers, that we forget one simple thing…

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I stumbled across this video, ironically on Facebook, that does a fantastic job of answering the ongoing question: Is social media a fad, or is it something more?

I can’t help but agree with the statements made in this video. Indeed social media is more than a fad, rather it’s a complete paradigm shift in how we as human beings communicate with one another, and it’s here to stay.

With 632,265 views, and 3,602 comments in just under a week, you know your brand has done something right when you’ve built relationships with consumers that prompt them to create videos like this professing their love:

I have to confess, this has to be one of my favorite YouTube videos to date. Two thumbs up to Apple, for not being afraid of jumping head first into that ever-so-scary world known as the online conversation.

I read an interesting article on Mashable today, which stated that recent reports claimed one in five tweets, are unsolicited brand advertisements by loyal consumers. In other words: your consumers are busy talking about you, and odds are, you have no idea.

I’ve mentioned it before, and I’ll mention it again: social media gives us a way to communicate and share, that has never been possible previously. Now more than ever, technology has enabled us to quickly and easily share our thoughts with the world, and instantly have that conversation with a limitless number of people. And it makes sense for it to happen this way. All day ever day, we’re faced with advertising, we use products, and we ask questions. The social sphere has just given us a way to make the conversation happen in real time, with people we know (or don’t know) rather than requiring we turn to Google for the answers.

What does this mean to you? Like it or not, social media isn’t going anywhere. And if you happen to be one of those that fears the potential repercussions of “the conversation”, it’s important to know that whether you’re part of the conversation or not, it’s still being had. If that’s not enough to convince you, perhaps this except from the aforementioned article will:

Although the brand mentions were a mix of positive and negative, associate professor at PSU Jim Jansen said that, surprisingly, “a lot of the brand comments were positive.” He went on to measure the influence of micro-blogging as compared to other media channels: “It may be right up there with e-mail in terms of its communication impact.”