A presentation for your internal clientsDirk Singer, Cow, twitter.com/dirkthecow

Justifying social media in the recession

Hello!About me: twitter.com/dirkthecow,

delicious.com/dirkthecow, dirkthecow.secondbrain.com

About Cow: thisiscow.com, thisisherd.com (blog), twitter.com/thisiscow, museumofcow.tumblr.com, netvibes.com/cowpr, cowpr.secondbrain.com

All talk, no action?

A large section of the internet today reminds me of the guy at your high school in 1984, out in the student

parking lot, talking endlessly about the awesome new stereo in his red

Camaro Z28.

He spends time in that parking lot showing everyone his massive kicker box and bad ass set of tweeters, instead of using it

Dave Johnson, One Man Lab

When actually, we are talking about something thats:

MeasurableCost efficientStrategic, not

tacticalIs here anyway

The received wisdom: Social media marketing set to boom in the recessionAccording to Marketing Sherpa:

Social media budgets (net) +28%

Direct mail budgets -40%Event spend -49%Print advertising -56%

But do the figures mask a bunker mentality?

Why? Heard a lot about it / dont really

understand it (46% of firms who hadnt done anything, dont understand it - Marketing Sherpa)

67% of marketers consider themselves beginners (FutureLab)

When times are tough, we stick to what we know and what works

And thats often traditional advertising

Lets start with a look at a few brand profiles

Sainsburys

SouthWest Trains

Currently for sale: Yours for 20!

Or you could also choose from

And on Flickr, this is who is representing Starbucks

So dont worry - Social media will find you!

Reasons why its timely to think about this now (and sell it to your internal clients)

Budgets are cut - so its a good time to try

something new

Plus consumers are not paying much attention anyway

Some stats for internal doubters

Even now, you still hear:This isnt for me, were not cool

When in factUK housewives spend

half (47%) their free time online (TNS)

Over 45s on Facebook grew by 165% Q4

The UK is the second most active social media market - 50% of adults (Ofcom)

So whatever your brand does - this is where you will find your consumers

4% of UK regional papers died last year (Roy Greenslade, The Guardian)

The transition to the web: No regional newspaper has more than 137 Google reader subscribers

Mainstream news turns off consumers - 28% are influenced by what they see in news media, 40% other media (Experian)

Internet now second most influential source of news after TV (Pew Report, TNS)

Traditional media and advertising RIP?

Say you had 100,000 in traditional advertising

Lets get onto cold hard cash

Two spots on ITV drama

In 1965, 80 percent of adults could be reached with three 60 second TV spots. Today it requires 117 prime time commercials to produce the same

result (Jim Stengel, CMO, P&G)

A social network strategy to include:

Someone to manage it for you (job creation!)

Design, hosting costs

Monitoring system to see whats being said (assuming you dont use free tools)

You could even have the budget to develop an online or iPhone application

And youll have change!

Or alternatively

Not only that, it ticks the measurable box

It gets you out of the fireworks business and builds long term dialogue

According to DEI Worldwide:

54% favour online representatives (thats you!) over a website

67% will pass on what they are told, 62% value their advice over run of the mill ads

It humanises your brand

It helps your search engine reputation....and helps the media find you

It allows you to fish where the fish are

For 70%. social media sites (the definition of which is

message boards, social networks, blogs or video

sharing sites) are a major source of information about

companies or brands

In fact, whats your website good for?

Skittles answered that question - took down its whole site, replaced with unfiltered social media

Who spends their days talking about multi-coloured, sugary candy?

So Mr/s internal client. What now?

At its most basic Claim your IDs! (use

checkusernames.com, userna.me)

Think about other places people can find you and where they go. What can you do?

Start sharing your thoughts, talk in human form, not corporate speak

Give someone responsibility for making it happen

And also

Encourage your staff to get to grips with social media and to take part

And publish clear do and dont disclosure guidelines

Finally, results wont happen overnight

Thank you for your time!Any questions - dirk@thisiscow.com

With thanks for the images (taken from Flickr via a creative commons / attribution / commercial license)TheshoppingsherpaSqaccomgspillerThemarqueVictoriapeckhamMikejohnstonMavmbeckernetTedpercivalOskayQuartermaneTwodollaDominicspics

Further details on some of the research:Google reader subscribers and regional newspapers, from Currybet.net - see http://bit.ly/pWBOMMarketing Sherpas research originally spotted on FreshNetworks blog http://bit.ly/vSkUmA lot of the stats from the presentation have additionally been taken from TNS Digital World / Digital Life, download from http://bit.ly/M3wGp