To listen to the blogosphere you would think the 30-second TV spot is toast — no longer relevant.  It’s not toast and those spots still work.  Advertising – TV or otherwise still has its place and value in an integrated media marketing strategy.

It’s easy to know what to do with a TV ad.  Advertisers buy a time slot that makes sense for the product or service and put the ad on TV.

What’s not so obvious is what to do with social media.  Once you determine your message, then what?  Tweet it?  Facebook it? Podcast it? Blog it?  And once you do it, have you done “advertising” or “public relations”?

The answers to those questions come somewhat organically, if you look at what you are trying to accomplish.

In this 30-second spot from overseas…

You get a little of both.  The sly advertiser gives you a chuckle and warm fuzzies for the brand as well.  You might go out of your way to watch this spot on YouTube and recommend it to friends.  It’s clearly an ad, but there is a hint of PR in there as well.

Most traditional spots, however don’t have that luxury.  You will not go out of your way to view a YouTube spot for the tried-and-true, “Come on down to Joes’ dealership and look at our rock bottom prices.” ad.  You just won’t.

But Joe can get your attention using social media if he’s smart enough to look at some long-term goals.

Let’s say Joe realizes times are tough and he wants to help – but he also wants to get credit for helping, so people will like and trust Joe and come see his rock bottom prices.

What can Joe do?  He can easily create (or have created) a video, using a $150 flip-cam on how to do routine maintenance on your car — change your oil, spark plugs, headlight bulbs etc.  Or he can do a blog with digital photos showing step-by-step instructions.  If Joe is a Toyota Dealer he could write about what he’s doing to handle accelerator problems, he might even go on camera to explain.  If nothing else he can post links to these services and messages that other people are generating. (Note: many local dealers have done this.)

Once the message is created, he tweets the link, posts it on his website and Facebook Fan page and does anything else possible to make people find it.  He might even assign a mechanic to answer questions from customers, making it a “conversation.”

The idea, as PR expert Marsha Friedman writes, is to emerge as a thought leader.

People will come to know Joe as a dealer who provides valuable information they need in a pinch.  They will see him as the guy who told it straight when things got tough with his cars.  Over time, Joe will be seen not just as the “price” guy, but the go-to guy.  Maybe Joe could even trade some of that positive PR or “PR equity” as we call it at Entwine, for slightly higher prices and margins.

Wouldn’t it be great if people thought, “His prices may be a bit higher but the peace of mind is worth it.”

That’s Social PR.

Who’s following You?  Have you looked in the mirror lately?

What’s the fastest growing marketing tool for businesses today?   It’s Social Media, and did I mention it’s free? We call it BIZ2.0. It’s a new way of thinking and doing business. For simplicity let’s focus on three of the most popular business tools - LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

So you’re collecting Connections on LinkedIn, Friends on Facebook and Followers on Twitter.

• What’s your criteria for following back?
• Are you effectively building your network?

Chris Brogan, a well respected social media thought leader, wrote “You’re Doing it Wrong” openly discussing how we participate in social networks. Here are some of his comments:

• You follow too many people on Twitter.
• You don’t allow blog comments.
• You add people to LinkedIn that you don’t know very well.
• You have ads on your blog.
• You use partial RSS feeds.
• Your blog posts are too short (too long).
• You shoot really long videos and don’t edit.
• You don’t follow people back.

Shawn Welch wrote a follow-up post suggesting that “Social media is not the place for instant celebrity…” and adding

“It’s tempting to join a network like Twitter and follow everyone under the sun because it’s easy and that feels like success. But even if you pick up 500 or 600 auto-follows or a few polite follow-backs, you’ll quickly find you’re not the success you think you are.”

Shawn states there are two key principles to social media:

Patience — slow growth wins over aggressive expansion

Build relationships along the way, interact and engage

What’s your strategy?

• Which tools are you using – LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook?
• What is your strategy for building these networks?
• What are your criteria for accepting a Connection, Friend or Follower?

The Tools – Each tool has a different reach and target market – who uses it.

Reach:

• Facebook - 400 million people globally are active users -50% active users log on to Facebook in any given day and more than 35 million users update their status each day
• LinkedIn - 60 million professionals with high personal incomes
• Twitter -18. 1 million unique visitors in December 09- 579% growth from December 08

Who uses it?

• Facebook – 35+ demographic now represents more than 30% of the entire user base,  55+ audience grew a whopping 922.7% in 2009.
• LinkedIn - In US 52 % are men and 48% are women; 38% make over $100k per year.
• Twitter – 70% are over 25; more females than males

BIZ2.0 Strategy
It’s clear that social media is impacting the business world as documented in Jeremiah Owyang’s Collection of Social Network Stats for 2009. Social media is re-defining and expanding relationships in the global business community.

The key to BIZ2.0 is the building of a strong and relevant network. In the traditional business world, networking is considered a very valuable marketing tool for sales, recruiting, exposure and building relationships. In a WEB 2.0 environment, BIZ2.0 is becoming a tool to build your personal brand, become a Thought Leader and generate targeted sales opportunities. This network represents you and reflects on the work that you do. In addition you now have opened your contacts to the business world.

Social media tools are new to most business people. For the most part they have not developed a strategy to build their valuable network. Many people just collect friends — as many, as fast as they can. They are called open networkers. There are no criteria. You are virtually accepted on a cold contact, based on their belief in open networking or referral from another follower. The more the merrier! The alternative is to step back and develop your personal BIZ2.0 strategy using your own social etiquette.