Digital Marketing World Fall 2009 Virtual Conference

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Social media and “killer content” held court today — once again — at Marketing Profs’ Digital Marketing Virtual Conference, the second one this year. Cruising through the sessions and booths at this information-loaded real-time experience is completely worth an all-day visit.

The statistics continue to accelerate — 60% of Americans use social media, according to Becky Carroll of the Petra Consulting Group and Michael Brito, social media strategist for Intel, in their presentation, “Building Customer Loyalty on the Social Web.” Of that 60%:

• 59% use it to interact with companies
• 93% believe that companies should have a social media presence
• 85% believe a company should interact with its audiences via social media

It’s remarkable how the social media buzz has changed from the “wow” factor to some serious long-term thinking. The experts have moved beyond their fascination with the cool tools and more thoughtfully into the durability of the social web for longer-term marketing strategies. In getting started, how’s a business to choose the best course of action? The marketing basics of relationship-building still count. ”Map out a strategy first, because the tools will change, and you want to be able to adapt to the next tool out there,” Carroll advised. “Believe it or not, Twitter won’t always be around.”

That’s really a solid point.  The Marketing Profs group certainly has its tactics well-mapped to an overall strategy: this virtual conference reportly has 12,000 registrations.

Another new study presented by Carroll and Brito correlates financial performance with ”deep brand engagement” among the Top Ten brands, such as Starbucks, Dell, Google, Yahoo and Intel. The take-aways here are that simply listening to customers without responding and taking action makes a business’ social media strategy not only ineffective but irrelevant. Social media marketing must create a real conversation, not just sell your brand. That means showcasing competitors’ good ideas, exchanging knowledge, being authentic and believable. Through that service comes credibility, and the most successful firms, small to large, have proven that credibility through social media leads customers to action — to buy.

‘Killer content” is a term that’s been refined, too. Think of it as engaging customers outside of particular transactions, noted presenter Kathy Warren, digital strategy-social media program manager for Hewlett Packard, and Kari Homan and Natanya Anderson of Powered, Inc., in another session. Killer content is something far different from messaging, demos and press releases.

Take HP’s online Learning Center, which they described as the “crown jewel” of the firm’s integrated marketing strategy. The interactive site drives brand loyalty and acquires new prospects through a learning environment rich in lifestyle content based on consumer needs and interests. The 115 content areas, tied to HP’s business objectives, are broken down into four categories: PC Security and Maintenance, Home Office, Digital Photography, and Microsoft Office and Adobe. Users create profiles and choose from a host of options — such as newsletters, customer insights and analytics, and social tools. Through this unbiased information, many customers eventually migrate to a purchase decision about an HP product, but that’s not the exclusive — or apparent — goal.

HP’s numbers tell the story of a successful Learning Center strategy:

• 22 million visits since 2004
• 1.3 million enrollments
• 92% would recommend the site to others
• 22% reported a purchase of an HP product
• 11% have stayed actively engaged since 2004

Among what the presenters called the “10 Commandments of Killer Content,” keep these priorities in mind:

• No infomercials — ever!
• Know and honor your audience and what they want to learn.
• Offer breadth and depth of content — keep it fresh and relevant but also some content that will have a long life.
• And here’s a really good one — listen to your customers and use that data to cut through organizational politics to make decisions about the content that will make them part of your community.