Although many marketers have realized the importance of social media in their overall strategy, not all of them are integrating social media with the rest of their campaign. Certain features, like polls and product reviews, are the most commonly integrated, but others, like blogs and microblogging, are still run separately by a large percentage of marketers.

Earlier this month, we wrote about how social media is only one piece of the marketing puzzle. There are things that cannot be done through social media, just as there are things that are not as effective through traditional media channels. Integrating social media with your campaign allows all of the various elements to compliment and supplement one another. For example, we include 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.

By Samantha Karol
@cpxsam
Sr. Marketing Assistant

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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

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.

David Shay is the EVP of Marketing at CPX Interactive. Read on to learn about his journey from law school grad to marketing professional at an online ad network.

1. Who are you, and what do you do here at CPX?

As EVP of Marketing, I am ultimately responsible for the messaging, both internally and externally, for the company. Initiatives that come out of the marketing department include, trade shows and networking events, online and print advertising, sales support materials, public relations and use of social media to disseminate information.

2. After college, you went to law school. How did you end up working in marketing for an online ad network?

I always knew I wanted to go to Law School, and I guess I assumed that meant that I wanted to be a lawyer as well. As law school drew to a close, I realized that this was an incorrect assumption. Rather than go the traditional route of a job at a law firm, I opened a private practice with a partner in Hollywood, FL. Three years was enough to prove to myself that I could do it, and also long enough for me to realize that I didn’t have to do it just because I had the law degree. I came up to NYC with my stuff in a duffel bag and found a job at a small advertising agency. Eventually, my career path led me to an online agency called Endai Worldwide. It was here that I met a colleague named Rob Rasko and the rest…as they say…is history.

3. How do you apply what you learned in law school to marketing?

People often question if the two paths (law vs. marketing) are similar at all. I think that they absolutely are. In law school, you are taught how to construct a way of interpreting and explaining facts in a way that is most favorable to your client’s position. Marketing is really driven by the same fundamentals. A marketer’s job is to spin and package information in a way that is most favorable to the company.

4. CPX recently opened a Manhattan office, which the marketing department now calls home. Why do you think it was important for the company, and the marketing department, to have a presence in NYC?

The move of the ‘forward facing’ departments of the company to NYC was both necessary and organic. With the development and growth of the sales and publishing teams, they have both been able to hone their target audiences to a high-profile /brand level. NYC is simply a more ‘target-rich’ environment for them, and being here makes it easier for them to interact socially and build relationships. As for the marketing department, it only makes sense for us to be with the teams we support most directly.

5. What kinds of things are on the horizon for CPX Marketing in the next few months?

We have a couple of interesting projects on our table at this point. In addition to laying the marketing groundwork for some pretty exciting business-level announcements planned over the next six months, we are focusing on taking our philanthropic arm, CPXample^TM, to the next level and we are working to support the online promotion and release of the first completed project by the indie film house, Chaos². Chaos² is owned and run by CPX founders Mike Seiman and Carlton Hickman.

Economic pessimism among marketers and agency media buyers appears to have bottomed out last spring and their ad spending plans are trending upward for most major media, according to the most recent data from an every-other-monthly tracking report surveying the “advertising confidence” of key media decision-makers.

Excerpt from Ad Spending Confidence Rebounds, Improves For Most Major Media on Mediapost.

The picture painted of behavioral targeting is often a negative one. It’s seen as an invasion of privacy, with the word “tracking” assumed to encompass all aspects of life. Though there are some websites who use the information they collect for evil (i.e. spam and malware), the majority use this data to give users a more personalized Web surfing experience.

Congress is considering enacting a bill to restrict tracking and targeting online. The most severe of bills could require websites to ask permission before sending a targeted ad. This would lead to a number of inconveniences for Web users, for example, frequently visited websites would no longer remember preferences or auto complete information, and frequency capping on ads would no longer exist, so the same user would see the same ad over and over.

The advertising and marketing industries recognize that changes need to be made, but they believe that self-regulation would be better than legislation, and they have already begun proving their case. In fact, a varied group of leading industry associations recently published a 48 page document entitled, “Self Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising.”

For more on this issue, read “Tracking Makes Life Easier for Consumers” on AdAge.com.

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.

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?

David Shay, EVP of Marketing at CPX Interactive, recently published his first blog post on iMedia Connection entitled Marketing Begins at Conception. In the post, he answers the question, “What IS marketing?” and provides tips to marketers on how to be part of the message crafting process. To read the post in full, visit David’s iMedia blog, and check back for more valuable marketing insight in the future.