Last week I had the distinct pleasure of presenting on three panels and at the last minute, the honor of getting to introduce Thursday’s keynote speaker, Charlene Li.  As an avid fan of the book Groundswell which Charlene co-authored this was a real honor to do no matter how last minute it was.

Charlene had a lot of great nuggets of wisdom in her presentation which focused on the How to Prepare for the Future of Search and how social media is affecting it each and every day.  The biggest piece of advice was probably the hardest for any SEO or PPC professional to comprehend; Focus on the Relationship with People, Not the Keywords People Use.

Conversations in Social Media

That was the point of my presentation at Search Engine Strategies as well.  The session “Managing Social Conversations” included myself, Dave Evans of Digital Voodoo, Mike Volpe of Hubspot and Brian Kalma from Zappos.  The whole panel had that focus too, in social media its about the relationships and conversations you are having with your audience that ultimately win the day, not the keywords that drive those conversations.

There were two primary focuses to my presentation, the first was that social media needs a strategy.  That requires a bit of work to create something successful.  Research, defining and measuring all go into strategy – it’s not just tactics like putting up a Facebook page, or starting a Twitter account.  If you don’t have a sound strategy behind doing those tactics, your efforts will most likely fail.

The second focus on my presentation was on measuring and monitoring.  Without measuring and monitoring how does a company know that what they are implementing with their social media strategy is really working?  Unfortunately most companies have been conditioned to relate success to a “click to purchase” ratio.  In social media this type of action rarely happens.  So what’s a company to do?

In Social Media – Measure Something Different!

So what do you measure?  How about interaction, involvement, influence and intimacy?  These are all factors that can be measured and proven to affect the bottom line of a company.  These can be measured and monitored through buzz monitoring tools and web analytics, its just a matter of understanding the data and turning it into actionable data. This is what our new social media white paper: “Social Media Impact: Unicorn or Elephant” is all about, so sign up for it if you are interested in learning more about doing Social Media the right way.

You can take a look at our Social Conversations presentations including the ones from SES SanJose and connect with us on Slide Share.

Serengeti has just published a new white paper: Measuring Social Media. Pick it up for free over at serengeticom.com and you’ll learn about how to measure social media and why it’s important.

With all the hype around so many different types of social media marketing tactics, from Twitter to Friend Feed, it’s tough not to automatically fall into the trap of the “ooooh, we need that too!” Unfortunately for a lot of companies, that lure is too strong and they slap up a Facebook page or a Twitter account without thinking about forming a strategy around it.

Just because the media is hyping how Oprah is using the latest, greatest social media site, doesn’t mean that every business should be doing the same. If your competition has a blog that doesn’t mean that you need to have a blog.

Understanding that marketing in social media is unique to each and every company is a giant step in the right direction of success. No two audiences are the same even if they are competitors. The philosophy of the company, the way employees interact with customers and even the look and feel of a product can all affect who is in your audience. Not only that, audiences online are different than those offline and its likely that you and your competition appeal to two entirely different audiences within the different social media sites.

All of this means that there’s no cookie cutter approach to creating a Social Media Strategy. For every company the approach is unique. Taking the time to do research will help point you in the right direction of where the conversations are, who are the influencers you need to connect with and what should be your success/failure measurements. There’s no out of the box solution for this, every company will have different results and different ways to implement common social media tools and sites.

Don’t fall for the hype of the shiny new social media objects, in the end it actually cost you a lot more than it would to take the time to formulate your own successful social media marketing strategy.

Ok, we said it for you. Save your breath. Now come back with us to reality. You do have the budget because it is very likely that you are flushing valuable marketing dollars down an unproductive toilet somewhere in your current marketing programs. I personally dealt with a medium enterprise company that cut $100,000 in hard Yellow Page advertising this year. Rather than saying “Hey look, we saved $100k!” they played it smart and said “Hey look, we had budgeted these dollars and we were getting no real return. Let’s put these funds in a place where we can really make a bottom line impact.” A good portion of that went to long overdue social media programs.

They are not looking back. Why? Consider the following:

• 13 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute
• 100,000,000 YouTube videos viewed every day
• 3,600,000,000 pictures stored on Flickr as of June ‘09
• 1,460% increase in visitors Twitter year over year for June ‘09
• 93% of social media users believe a company should have a social media presence
• 5,000,000,000 minutes spent on Facebook every day

You get the point right? Every day the numbers grow and the users of social media become more sophisticated. In addition, they buy products. They might even be interested in your products. If you’re not there for the opportunity you are costing your business valuable resources.

Whether you are in the social media game now or are considering getting into it, you need to do it right. The people are there and the numbers are growing. If you’re not then you may need to spruce up that resume a bit.

We’re hosting a dinner featuring Charlene Li, author of Groundswell, on Wednesday night at SES San Jose.  If you are flying into San Jose today or tomorrow for SES, find Serengeti’s Frank Reed on the trade show floor and give him your business card.  On Tuesday evening he’ll draw a winner for a free seat to this invitation only dinner.

Special treat:  Mike Grehan, the new VP and Global Content Director for Search Engine Watch, ClickZ and Search Engine Strategies will be on hand at the dinner to talk about the intersection of search and Social Media.

Any Social Media expert will tell you that the first step in creating an effective program is to know your audience. This is a no brainer, right? Of course you know your audience! (This is the point in the conversation when I often see an eye roll; I’ve also noticed some nodding off around the conference table.)

At the very minimum, most marketers have some demographic data on who the customer is. In many cases, marketers are armed with more than demographics. For example, a marketer may know that potential customers tend to be environmentally conscientious or travel extensively.

But is this enough information to develop a Social Media strategy? Not really. A good Social Media program is essentially a plan for developing relationships with customers and potential customers. You need more than a limited profile to know how to start building those relationships (just ask EHarmony).

Think of it this way: If you really want to make friends with a person, what do you need to know about that person? Age, gender, income, education and the fact that they like fast cars might be helpful, but if you want this person to like you, to talk to you, to be your friend, more information would be helpful. For example:

• Where does your Potential New Friend (PNF) like to hang out? What kinds of places does he/she avoid?
• What kinds of activities does PNF participate in? What does he/she not like to do?
• Is PNF shy? Or does he/she love to socialize and meet new people?
• What is PNF passionate about?
• What makes PNF really mad?
• Are there things you should avoid doing or saying when engaging with PNF?
• What are PNF’s friends like? What kind of people does he/she like to be around?
• How should you approach PNF?
• What does PNF need that he/she doesn’t already have? If you were going to bring a gift, what would it be?

Yes, it’s a lot of information to gather. The good news: It’s possible. By listening to consumers online and tracking their conversations, networks and activities, marketers can learn plenty.

At Serengeti, we create Social Media Strategies based on this sort of in-depth analysis. True, it is a significant undertaking. However, consider this: 50% of the Fortune 1000 companies who launch Social Media programs this year will fail (Gartner Group). Taking the time to understand the people you are trying to build a relationship with is simply common sense (or perhaps due diligence).