Lisa Chang, Interactive Marketing Specialist

OVERVIEW 2010

Here's a great graphic of some of the keys to sharing and being social in 2010.  While Facebook has gained some huge ground, they have not been the only game in town and social media is much more than just the big 5 players including Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Google. 

It's indicative that even in the peak growth year for social media that it has not overtaken some of the key online marketing tools in the online marketing realm.  Email marketing, search engine marketing and even effective blogging platform or website platform choices and content are key to an overall strategy.

But, take a look at this amazing visual representation of some of the key engagement points which would be the starting point for developing an effective branding and communications program.

To have an effective program which engages the entire organization, we need to take a look further at how to gain that full engagement.

TWITTER 2010

Here are the 10 most powerful tweets for the year 2010.  Take a look because some give pause for how Twitter can be used both personally as well as professionally.

Makes you take a second look at just how powerful the Twitter platform is as an overall engagement tool.

FACEBOOK & SOCIAL MEDIA 2010

Social media matured during 2010.  Time Magazine names Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year and that Hollywood releases the move The Social Network.  Facebook had over 111 million people online from Asia on New Year's Day.

EMAIL MARKETING 2010

For a while, many were trying to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but now that the social media hype has settled, email marketing is now being recognized again as a key ingredient to the overall mix and a key tool to use with social media strategies.

We're already seeing a higher adoption rate for email marketing initiatives to fuel social media initiatives amongst marketers as well as organizations.

SEARCH ENGINE 2010

The great part about what's been happening in the social media, blogging and email marketing world is that businesses small and large who have been creative and focusing in on creating online engagement points have not only become market leaders but have also ranked well on search engines.  In fact, online promotion has over taken traditional advertising due to the many results of solid and comprehensive interactive / online marketing programs.  The use of high quality SEO coding techniques or platforsm as well as keyword optimization have remain steadfast but the adoption of quality content has gradually become understood by organizations of all sizes.

WEB 2.0

Use of web 2.0 technology is a part of blogging and website platforms that allow the staff and internal resources to extend the organization to reach customers, partners, suppliers and others for improved listening, customer service processes, innovation, creative leadership, reduced corporate risk and much more.

Look to cloud computing as the next wave of extending the organization even further.  The leaders in leveraging Web 2.0 are gaining ground with their customers as well as market share.  Making it pervasive throughout the organization involves combined partnership approach to gain complete organizational adoption at every level.  Listening and implementing appropriate actions becomes a holistic organizational effort.

Look forward to more talk on social media listening in our upcoming conversations.