Lee Odden over via Ed Kohler of the Technology Evangelist writes about Social Media Optimization. How does business leverage the opportunity to connect with people using consumer generated media tools?


I’ve distilled Lee’s tips into a easy to use and remember format for my readers here:


1. Get In.
Go where where your market is and investigate the Long Tail for related niches for your products and services. Get your brand is fair percentage of minds hare.


2. Fit In.
Create community around your brand for your percentage of minds hare to pay dividends. Go interactive and create conversations and networks around your brand. Participation is mandatory or someone else will start the conversation that you should have had to begin with. Meet your community where they are and find out what they want and deliver it. Fit in with the new expectations and habits of social networking.


3. Make Friends.
Do actually engage your market through community. Create interactive contests, polls, user feedback loops whatever allows your community to choose, create and contribute to the improvement of your brand. Allow them to submit home grown videos, photos, naming contests and any other unique and interesting experiences that will reinforce your brand and a great experience. This leads to trust. When you’ve been authenticated and validated by your community that can rightly influence the message of your market about your products and services. You'll find yourself in a cooperative position where consumer involvement becomes a vital contribution to your success and word-of-mouth marketing is lifting your business profile in a positive manner that helps you acquire new business.


Check out Lee’s comments by clicking the link below:


SMO: What is Social Media Optimization?: Technology Evangelist.

To read the Lee Odden's comments in full, visit him at the Online Marketing Blog: New Rules for Social Media Optimization.

From MediaPost:

 In the emerging context of pull media, it will be even more important for marketers to maintain an intimate connection with consumers. Relevancy and personalization are requirements in online marketing.

JupiterResearch projects that growth in online direct marketing will shift from list rentals to sponsorship and co-registration programs that work to target offers contextually. “It’s not about making the consumer believe in the brand, but communicating that the brand believes in the consumer by connecting to them with relevance and responsibility,” says Greco.
As everything goes granular, niche, and interactive, we will all learn to love the data. “The guys who get their arms around the databases are going to win,” says Fitzpatrick. “If you don’t learn how to embrace technology now, find another job.”

As new media channels continue to contribute to the fragmentation of the mass market into millions of niche markets, marketing pro’s are finding themselves in lurch of sorts. The growing influence of consumer voice and choice has accelerated the need for marketing pros to work to figure out how to manage traditionally accepted online and off line marketing tactics with that of new online consumer behavior and social markets and the technologies that make social markets possible and powerful. This new consumer behavior is that of social markets. Consumers don’t blindly trust corporate advertising any longer, they trust the voice of the people and the stories they tell about the products and services they use.

It just isn’t the marketing message any longer. The markets are the message as well. It is what is being said about business that becomes the period or full stop to messages business are putting out. The biggest online imperative for any marketer and entrepreneur is the talk it up with your consumers and prospects NOW. You must open a new media channel of communication and engage your markets as  you work out new marketing approaches and related ROI.

The Long Tail has opened vast channels of interest and purchasing that is both narrow and deeper than the mainstream, broad mass market interests. The Long Tail is also where social markets are fiercely active and consumers continue to leverage new media tools to communicate, create, distribute and buy content and merchandise through decision making that is deeply influenced by the consumers themselves. Said another way, The Long Tail affords consumers the means and access to opportunities to create buzz about what they like most and share it with others who in turn act on those recommendations. Consumers now have the tools to personalize their information streams and target the content, products and services that allow them to dig deeper into highly niched and special interest content. This creates a much more rewarding buying experience for consumers and those businesses that provide buying experiences that cooperate with these new consumer behavior patterns are being richly rewarded for it.

Consumers want to be able to integrate choice, creativity and contribution into their buying experiences. They want interactivity and unique and individual experience as well. They want to customize, socialize and validate their choices. Can your enterprise integrate any of these characteristics into your customer experience with your business?

How does old school traditional marketing transition from push marketing where mainstream media channels controlled the message to new media channels such as consumer created blog content, podcasts and video where consumers are controlling the message and altering the marketing and advertising message of big business in the process? It’s won’t be easy for businesses who aren’t willing to adapt and change.

The marketing challenge is in the economics of balancing old marketing methods with the economics of reaching into the Long Tail of ecommerce and into new and emerging markets that aren’t as visible, are vigorously consumer controlled through opinion, contribution, filtering and personalization and are becoming very profitable and stable sources of income and opportunity.

 This is an insightful article about the challenge of marketing for Web 2.0. Read more by clicking the link below: 

MediaPost Publications - Getting In The Front Door -.