Launching a social media marketing campaign in concert with a traditional media campaign, such as press releases, is a great idea.
I’ve seen a few others touch on this subject in the past with the latest being Scott from SEOmoz, who talks about creating a Digg campaign to compliment a client’s traditional PR campaign.
While I agree with Scott, it also depends on the audience you’re trying to target. For example, if you’re targeting housewives, Digg is obviously not the right place for you to launch a viral campaign. I think the most important thing is to know who your audience is and how to reach them via social media. Otherwise there’s really no point in attempting something like this.
Digg is great, don’t get me wrong, but unfortunately you can only reach a certain demographic through it. I think it’s important to think about your target audience / demographic as you move forward with any social media marketing campaign.
One commenter, Michael Visser mentions the fact that “Until solid stats and risks can be calculated many agencies will avoid this sector.”
I think that Michael makes a strong point here that I agree with completely. Measurable statistics and risk factors need to be determined for any social media campaign and clients need to be prepared for what they are getting into. Because social media marketing has only been recently defined, I think it will be some time before this type of measurable information is standardized. My guess is that as this newly defined marketing tactic becomes more mature, we will see new ways to measure it. I look forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts on this idea and how traditional PR can be integrated with social media marketing.
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Cameron Olthuis is a web marketing strategist who specializes in social media marketing and search engine optimization. He has been involved in online marketing since 2000 and has worked with companies ranging in size from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. Cameron is currently the Director or Marketing at ACS and a blogger at Pronet Advertising.
