Advanced Social Media – Random Day One Notes

I’ve just finished Day One of a two-day AMA Face-to-Face Training seminar on Advanced Social Media, and I want to give kudos to AMA and to our instructor Dana VanDen Heuvel (@danavan, www.marketingsavant.com) for a great day. Social media is a big subject, with a lot to cover in just two days. Today the discussion was focused on strategy and planning, and tomorrow we will cover implementation / tools and tactics.

I’ll be sharing some of what we are covering in this seminar over the next few weeks, but if you have any specific questions, or if my posts raise new questions for you, then let’s get a conversation going.

There were many great ideas in today's session, but here are three points that stood out to me:

Don’t commit random acts of social media.
It may seem obvious, but too many companies jump into social media without a clear set of objectives or an understanding of how social media can impact their marketing programs. As Dana points out in one of his first charts, most businesses are quick to test tactics, but aren’t taking a larger strategic view. As a result, most are doomed to underperform. CNET estimates that 50% of social media campaigns launched by Fortune 100 companies this year will fail because they are built without an understanding of how to integrate social media into their total marketing program.

Think of social media as a multiplier, not a separate channel.
The companies that are experiencing the greatest social media success have stopped treating social media like a separate channel and integrate social media throughout every element of their marketing program.



Good social marketers think beyond their obvious user base interests to consider the broader “sphere of interest” of those customers.
Dana’s example shows the obvious interests of a biking enthusiast that a bike shop should take into consideration, but goes beyond that to think about broader, related areas of interest that can be incorporated into your social media strategy.



I will be sharing more on content strategy, social media policy, and social media tactics in future posts, but I wanted you to get a sense of some of the thoughts that stood out to me on Day One of the training seminar. If you’ve got questions, I’ll try to address them, so let me know what you are thinking.

Oh, and thanks Dana for a great first day. I can’t wait till tomorrow!


-- Don Morgan


Don Morgan is VP Communications for PSAMA and Head Rainmaker at Raindance Consulting, a business development and social media consultant in Seattle.