Intro to Social System Marketing

The social system marketing model that I developed was created to help me and my staff not only integrated all the marketing vehicles, activities and content that we were leveraging, but also to give us a distinct process that worked for us in any type of launch that we took on.

My definition of social system marketing is: A refined launch-type model for Marketing in 2012 incorporating PR, social media, online marketing (e.g. web, lead gene) and relevant multi-media content into a full circle integrated step by step system.

As this model was being created and tested over the last several years, there were some key findings that I saw made a difference in how successful we were in terms of achieving our target traffic and CTRs. These became important strategies for success and activities that we wanted to sustain over time.

The first was that the old school press release was not our best friend for traffic and outreach. We soon came to the conclusion through our metrics that social media releases, embedding video and other information assets gave us the best pick up. This assumed that the content was relevant to the media audience specifically and gave the blogosphere various assets to choose from to suit their needs; different sizes and types of graphics, article length content, and even infographics.

Of vital importance, PR must start the flow; whether its a full release or a social mead alert. PR starts the flow of traffic and you manipulate it to the places you want it to go.

I also saw that the model needed to be a continuum; meaning that every asset, whether it was audio, written word or image had to be linked to all the other assets; link everything to every other thing. And as such, make it very easy for readers to share content, re-tweet, Like or post in Facebook or LinkedIn.

Always add some level of SEO and SEM to the mix as well as LinkedIn or Facebook advertising to targeted audiences.

Finally, reward your audience, don't bribe, acknowledge their existence and opinions and give personal contact emails whenever possible and personalize landing pages to the social media vehicle you are using. If you are wanting a specific call to action, depending on that action, build a landing page or a microsite.

The magic sauce of social system marketing is combining two things: community and timing of the message.

Please read my SSM Case Study which will take you through an actual launch of an Industry Report that I led to help an Industry Alliance called the Wireless Broadband Alliance. The results of the launch were highest ever downloads they had ever had as well as exceeding a target number for new members. Back to Online Marketing Strategies More on Social System Marketing