David Scott Joins Integrati Marketing as our Social Media commentator and expert.

We are pleased to let you know after lengthy negotiations (quite a few lattes) and discussions that we welcome David Scott to the Integrati Marketing Blog.

David is an Australian Media expert and active commentator with all things Social Media. David is a professional media specialist having worked in commercial TV and broadcast journalism.

With David’s extensive knowledge and insight about not only the Australian media landscape but also the trends, best practice observations and “what not to do” in Social Media, we are sure you will find David’s weekly updates of interest.

Even better, as you would expect David being a professional communications expert brings an engaging and easy to read  style of writing to this site which we greatly appreciate. So, welcome David and we look forward to reading more from you about Social Media in the coming weeks.

Clinton

Integrati Marketing.

Guest post by Joel Norton: Why Social Media Doesn’t Matter Anymore!

Joel Norton an expert in Direct Marketing with over 20 years of experience has joined Integrati Marketing this week to talk about Social Media. Joel runs BoostHQ.com.au a great Marketing Agency which provides training about how to benefit from Social Media for Small Medium Business.

The hype about social media continues to echo but the fact is, it really does not matter anymore.

The idea behind the hype, measurement and rush to claim guru status revolved around the tools and the platforms, all of which were new, but none of which were the point.

The reason social media doesn’t matter anymore is that it really doesn’t exist beyond a label. The truth is that ‘social media’ is simply a bunch of tools. What does matter is the ability to increase interaction and to build even deeper relationships with our customers, and the opportunity to build trust with potential prospects. Once we drop the ‘social media’ label, we’re left with 4 key factors that do matter.

Prospect Engagement

If we’ve learned one thing over the last year or two, it’s that prospects are drawn to the ability to interact with the companies, brands and messages that they choose to absorb.

Marketing and sales need to incorporate this ability to ‘interact’ in order to even get an invitation into the prospect’s decision-making world. Any opportunity we have to start a conversation and start the process of building trust should be grabbed with both hands.

Customer Experience

It’s more important than ever to ensure that we deliver exceptional customer service and we keep our existing customers loyal. These new channels provide a great opportunity to keep our customers at the centre of our business and strengthen our relationship.

It also provides increased opportunity for our advocates – our customers who love us – to promote our products and services on our behalf. If being found by prospects is the new form of lead generation awareness, then trust is the new form of lead conversion. Trust happens rapidly when customers have an experience worth talking about, and a remarkable customer experience is the most effective form of lead generation.

Collaboration

The Internet has enabled a world where we can work in conjunction with prospects, customers, suppliers, mentors, advisors and staff to improve our existing products and services, as well as develop new ones.

Community sourcing is a practice that underpins all product, service and business development activities.

Fusion

Another powerful lesson gained over the last few years is that offline activity is enhanced, rather than replaced, by online activity.

The careful fusion of hi-touch business building that’s done face to face, with hi-tech business building that enables more frequent, personalised contact and communication is the secret to delivering the most advanced customer experience.

The tools you use will differ depending on your business and your marketing strategy.

Here are my 5 Top Tips on how to develop effective interaction in marketing using social media tools:

1. Listening is the Best Way to Develop a Strategy

As with all marketing, you should always define your strategy before you dive into tactics and execution, and social media is no different. Developing a ‘Listening Station’ is the best form of market research, and allows you to develop an appropriate social media strategy that you can align with your broader business objectives.

2. Optimise your Brand Assets

Once you’ve developed your strategy, you need to claim your digital real estate by setting up profiles on the appropriate search and social networks. You need to control and optimise your digital assets such as profiles, pages, photos, audio and video to ensure you have a consistent message.

3. Content as Lead Generation

People go to search engines on a daily basis looking for answers. Businesses who publish relevant content frequently via their blog are more likely to be found during these searches. It’s about changing your approach from ‘hunting’ to ‘being found’. The content also demonstrates your expertise, and starts the process of building trust with your prospects.

4. Networking Hasn’t Really Changed

People network to expand their contacts, meet new prospects and potential employees, catch-up with customers and conduct research. Social networks provide the same opportunity just in a slightly different style of engagement, and can greatly enhance your traditional approach to networking.

5. A System is the Solution

Managing your social media assets, online networking and creating a regular stream of content can be daunting. It’s critical that you utilise dashboards, and you integrate and amplify your content on the different platforms and networks. Most importantly, you must develop a system to ‘manage the beast’ effectively.

Let’s stop measuring adoption of social media and go to work on simply measuring effective interaction in marketing.

About Joel Norton:

Joel is Chief Strategy Officer of Boost Marketing, a specialist small business marketing coach. He is an accomplished marketing professional with 22 years experience, and is passionate about delivering strategic, practical marketing solutions that help small business to be more profitable. Joel distributes Weekly Marketing Tips which you can subscribe to at www.BoostHQ.com.au, or you can follow him on Twitter @BoostHQ

Integrati Marketing Consulting works with Joel and BoostHQ with various engagements for Social Media strategy reviews and implementations for businesses looking to improve their customer dialogue programmes.

The National Broadband Network is good for Small Medium Businesses in Australia

The Integrati Marketing Consulting team are passionate believers in the opportunity for Small Medium Business in Australia to benefit from the National Broadband Network (NBN).

Leaving politics aside and taking a moment to have a look at how Australia is bench-marked Worldwide for high speed Internet access we are not even in the top 10. In fact, we are ranked 50th in the world by connection speed according to the Quarter One report 2010 from Akamai “The State of the Internet“. We are soundly beaten in connection speeds by countries like Latvia and Romania who are in the international top 10 for connection speed! (report is available here from Akamai)

Now, anyone who has used a slow Internet connection will understand why speed is important and in Australia the Internet and our so-called broadband is anything but fast.

Why slow Internet speed is a worry for Small Medium Business?

Small and Medium Businesses are starting to use the services available on the Internet to improve their businesses opportunity of being ‘found, contacted and making a sale’ through online channels like, websites, Social Media, Local Mobile Search and many more touch points to come.

What is important about all of these access points is that they rely on high-speed access to send the data whizzing back and forth. The faster the connection the more improved the outcome for the person using or accessing the website etc.

What if?

What if the Australian Internet was so fast that Australian businesses website pages came up in 10th of seconds instead of 4-5 seconds the increased satisfaction for users would be immense. We would see benefits for reduced costs of transactions between parties through reductions in time, real video conferencing without delays – no more tyranny of distance in this great continent of ours.

The benefits for online marketing.

With the faster connection your business would be able to focus your time on what really matters rather than worrying about the hygiene factors of server bandwidth ping times and page load speed. It simply would not be an issue anymore. What is even better SMB’s marketing would benefit from a focus on:

• Faster sites = increased usage and customer satisfaction
• Increased usage of the Internet by Australians
• New opportunities to market to people ‘out and about’ with mobile and interactive devices
• Focus on relevant and engaging content – worrying less about file sizes and interactive limitation due to speed
• Opportunity – we would be able to create integrated campaigns that seamlessly couple across devices and touch points

I know that there is great debate in Australia about the cost of creating this Natural Monopoly with the Wholesale Broadband for the NBNco.

But what we also need to think about, is the waste which would result from the lost productivity, if we do not build the NBN!

This is a point which is often missed in the banter about budget. All great businesses and countries know that if you invest wisely you will reap the rewards. If all Australians were on the fastest Internet access in the World we would be at a competitive advantage and not lingering at the bottom of the broadband connectivity chart. Maybe we could learn a thing or two from Latvia and Romania about high speed Internet as well!