Social media is great. People from opposite ends of the Earth can be involved in conversation with one another. We can receive real time updates from hundreds of people at once.  It allows companies unprecedented opportunities to connect with their customers. But, there are certain things that social media can’t do, and we have to remember that it’s only one piece of the marketing puzzle.

While it’s good to accumulate fans and followers, these numbers don’t mean anything if you’re not getting your message across. Are all of these people mindlessly reading your streams? Or are they interacting with the content you post and clicking on the links? Has your website seen increased traffic since you created your social media presence?  These are the questions you need to ask.

If you’re not getting the response you had hoped for, try and figure out why. Maybe you need to integrate your social media presence with other aspects of your marketing plan. At CPX, we include our Twitter/Facebook/Blog links on printed materials for industry events, and as part of the contact section at the bottom of press releases.   We also asked all of our employees to include these links in their e-mail signatures. These things give our social media presence context.

One thing that cannot be stressed enough is that social media takes time and effort. You have to be willing to dedicate resources to it if you want to succeed, and you can’t expect to see results overnight. Even though most social sites are free of cost, that doesn’t mean they are simple and can be put on the back burner. Also, remember that social media is still relatively new. Even the “experts” don’t have years and years of experience like professionals in traditional marketing.

By Samantha Karol
@cpxsam
Sr. Marketing Assistant

Welcome back to the CPX Interactive Blog! If you haven't already, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed, and be sure to connect with CPX across the Web! Thanks for visiting!

In October, Twitter launched a new feature: Twitter Lists. They allow the Twitter user to sort the people they are following into smaller lists so important tweets no longer get lost in the shuffle. Although compiling these lists may seem tedious, they can definitely provide value for your company.  Here are some tips and suggestions for making the most of lists:

• Create lists for groups like industry experts, clients, journalists, etc. so you can keep up with their tweets.
• When you attend, sponsor, or host an event, collect e-mail addresses and plug them into Twitter. Create a list and give it the same name as the event.
• Remember that you can determine whether a list will be private or public after you create it. If you set the list to private, no one will know that list exists except you, even the people who are on it.
• With the previous tip in mind, keep a list of your competitors. That way, you can keep tabs on what they’re doing and how they’re using social media.
• Check out the lists you’ve been put into by other Twitter users. This is a good indication of whether you’re conveying messages the way you intend to, and how other people perceive your company.
• Along the same lines, look through the lists other people have made, and see if any of them would be worthwhile for you to follow. They have already done the leg work of putting those people into a specific category, and they probably made the list public because they thought it could be of use to others.

So, log into Twitter, click New List in the sidebar, and start listing!  And of course, stay up to date with CPX Interactive by following us on Twitter!

By Samantha Karol, Sr. Marketing Assistant

According to this survey, conducted in April of this year, only 17.6% of respondents do not have an active social media presence and don’t want one.  However, the majority of companies continue to develop their presence on social media sites, recognizing the opportunity to reach clients and customers through these channels.

A recent study by Burson-Marsteller found that 21% of Fortune 100 companies are active on Twitter, Facebook, or have a corporate blog, while 22% are active on two of those channels, and 17% are active on all three. Twitter is the most popular channel among these companies. (View the rest of their findings here.)

As for companies who do not currently have a social media presence, many are making it a priority for the future. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) found that social media was the most popular response from US marketing executives when asked which channel they would like to employ to develop their brand.

For more on using social media for your company, and to see what we do here at CPX, check out these Social Media Marketing Tips & Tricks.

This blog is kind of like “Social Media Headquarters” for CPX Interactive. But, we have quite a few other pages across the Web, and we invite you to visit us there as well.

We also blog on Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr, and Vox.  For photos from around the office,  CPX and industry events, and company trips, visit our pages on Flickr and Shutterfly. Longer CPX videos are on YouTube, and shorter blips can be found on the CPX Interactive channel on 12seconds.tv.

CPX also has a Twitter feed, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, Delicious bookmarks, and a FriendFeed. So, if you’re on any of these sites, be sure to check out our pages. We’d love to connect with you!

Thoughts from Samantha Karol, Marketing Assistant:

Over the past month or so, I’ve been reading and learning a lot about social media marketing. I’m always eager to take in as much information as I can, so I can make sure that CPX’s social media marketing efforts are as successful as possible.

From keynote addresses and panels at OMMA Social, to articles on Mashable and iMedia Connection, there have been a few consistent themes.  Here is some of what I’ve learned:

• Social media marketing takes a lot of time and effort. As Lisa Wehr put it, “Social media marketing isn’t a quick, free way to impact your bottom line. It isn’t something that you should give to an intern because they know how to set up a MySpace page.” If you want to get a lot out of it, you have to put a lot into it. Consider hiring someone to focus on executing your social media plan.

• Research the various social media channels, and the learn the difference before you build your pages.  Determine which sites are best for you and develop a strategy instead of diving right in.

• On Twitter: Share historic moments like awards, recognition, and new office openings, and give your followers a taste of what it’s like to work at your company.

• The most commonly emphasized point is the following: Be authentic, write with a human voice, and tell the story of your company from a different perspective than can be found on your corporate website.

What We Do:

• I spend the majority of my time working with social media for CPX. I was brought on, in part, because not only do I enjoy and understand social media, but I know how to use it. However, I certainly don’t know everything, and the Internet is a constantly changing medium, so I’m always researching new ideas.

• On Twitter, we have definitely shared historic moments with our followers:

• As for authenticity, we don’t auto-tweet, and all of the content on this and our other blogs and social media pages is  posted by me or someone else in the marketing department. In addition to our company Twitter feed, there are a number of us who tweet on our own.

• Showing a different side of CPX through these social media channels is very important to us. We want you to meet the people behind the logo.

Like I said, we’re always learning and growing, but so far, social media has been a great way for CPX to connect, share and explore.

This week, Forrester Research released their five year forecast, projecting an increase in interactive ad spending, despite a decrease in advertising budgets overall.  Search and display advertising will continue to bring in the most money, but the most substantial growth they predict is in social media, rising from $716 million this year to $3.1 billion in 2014. The percentage of ad spend devoted to interactive is projected to reach 21% in 2014, a sizable increase from 12% this year.

For a visual, and more information on Forrester’s findings, visit their blog or read this article on Mashable.

As I was browsing through the articles in the Social Media section of iMedia Connection, I came across a title that made me stop and think: “Why Twitter will soon become obsolete.” The author of this article, Jason Clark, is quick to point out that he is not a Twitter hater, and actually happens to be a Twitter user himself (@clarkster). Nonetheless, he explains his theory of Twitter’s eventual demise by putting it into context with the history of social networking sites from past to present.

Clark explains that, although the term “social networks” is a popular buzzword these days, the concept is not new.  Online bulletin boards, forums, and e-mail paved the way for social media as we know it today. Social media marketing has also been around for a lot longer than we realize. In fact, those annoying e-mails that we now refer to as spam were one of the earliest incarnations.  Speaking of, has anyone noticed the spam-like accounts and messages that have begun to infiltrate the Twitter space? I’m talking about the Auto DMs that promise thousands of followers and plans guaranteed to get you rich quick. Clark asks what I think is a very important question: “How long will it take to wear people down dealing with these kinds of requests?”

Combine the increasing prevalence of Twitter spam with the site’s low retention rate, “limited and obscure nomenclature,” simple functionality, and the upcoming release of Google Wave, and Clark predicts that Twitter won’t stay on top for long.

While I agree with a lot of these points, I also think that Twitter will fare better than some of its predecessors.  I’m definitely not an expert in social media history, but I’ve lived through most of it. I was in middle school at the time when message boards were all the rage and AOL Instant Messenger came into existence, high school when MySpace entered the scene, and a college freshman when Facebook took campuses countrywide by storm. As a self-proclaimed technology nerd, I have to admit that it’s been pretty exciting to watch the Internet develop.

I’ve never seen anything like Twitter, and although I’m pretty sure it can’t keep growing at the rate it has been, I think it will retain popularity for a long time.  Just look at the ages I was when each of these sites came to be, which are coincidentally quite fitting, and you’ll see the difference between Twitter and all of the rest.  Twitter has staying power because it reaches the greatest variety of users: people of different ages, professions, education levels, locations, political parties, and religious beliefs…I could go on and on.

What do you think? Will Twitter soon become obsolete?  What have you witnessed as social media has developed over the years?

Should companies use social media as part of their marketing strategy? This is a question that has been debated and discussed endlessly, from boardrooms to blogs to industry conferences. There’s no easy answer because there are just too many factors to consider. For example:

• What industry are you in?
• Are your clients and/or customers using social media?
• What will social media help you to accomplish that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do?
• Are your competitors using social media?
• Do you have someone on your staff who is already capable of managing a social media strategy? Or would you have to train people or hire someone new?

These are only some of the considerations, and the answers will be different for every company. Another question you may be asking is, what’s the point? Again, the answer may vary, but unlike the other questions, this one isn’t all subjective.  According to eMarketer, there will be approximately 88.1 million online social network users in the US this year, and the breakdown of unique visitors to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter is as follows:

That’s a lot of eyeballs. So, if you go by the numbers, social media seems pretty enticing. Once you decide that you want to employ a social media strategy, there are even more questions to answer. Which sites should we use, how many, and why? In a recent poll, LinkedIn asked their users, “What is the most important new platform for brands to master? 30% of respondents said Twitter, followed closely by Facebook at 26%, and LinkedIn itself at 22%.  Blogging has also increased in popularity among companies, and the number of people reading blogs has also increased.

I am the resident social media “expert” at CPX Interactive, and I spend a lot of my time working with our various social media pages.  In addition to company profiles, there are a number of CPXers on Twitter, and our CEO has built up an impressive social media arsenal that includes Twitter, YouTube, and blog posts. I think there will always be differing opinions on the value of social media marketing, but if the numbers are any indication, it won’t be disappearing any time soon.

Does your company incorporate social media into your marketing strategy? What sites do you use? Have you found social media beneficial?  What will be the future of social media marketing?

Samantha Karol
Marketing Assistant, CPX Interactive

Professional networking site, LinkedIn, recently asked its users to choose which new platform is the most important for brands to master among: Digg, Facebook, iPhone, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Of the nearly 4,000 respondents, 30% chose Twitter as the most important, followed closely by Facebook at 26%, and LinkedIn at 22%. These results are just further evidence of the important role social media is playing in marketing campaigns.

Check out CPX Interactive on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and our other Web 2.0 pages.

By Samantha Karol
Marketing Assistant, CPX Interactive

Over the past couple of years, the blogosphere has exploded in popularity, and corporate blogs, like this one, are on the rise. According to a report by e-Marketer published this month, five separate surveys found that blog use by US companies and marketers had increased in 2008. “A University of Massachusetts survey of companies on the Inc. magazine 500 list found that 39% of respondents used blogging in 2008–more than double the 19% of a year earlier,” the report says.

Thus far in 2009, many marketers have begun employing social media strategies, and are considering blogs part of the equation. A February 2009 survey of US marketers by iMedia, cited in the eMarketer report, found that 70% of respondents were “personally spending a lot of time on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. but not moving dollars there,” and the remaining 30% had already spent money on social media and were planning on increasing their investments.

Over the past few months, CPX Interactive has employed a successful social media marketing strategy that includes a number of Web 2.0 sites, in addition to this blog and two others.  According to eMarketer, the number of US blog readers (Internet users who read blogs at least monthly) was 86.8 million in 2008, and they project that number to reach 96.6 million this year, and 128.2 million by 2013. If the number of blog readers does increase, then blogging will continue to be a successful and innovative way for companies like CPX Interactive to reach out through the Web.