The Social Media Myth Trifecta by Jerry Hart
1) “Oh, Social Media isn’t the blue pill that will cure all my marketing problems?” Sometimes a social media campaign can produce substantial and measurable results quickly. Social media is great if you’re already a star, but that doesn’t happen overnight. Amid the recent launch of one of my colleagues T-shirt design business, Pawfun.com, he relied heavily on his 4,000-plus Twitter followers and 120,000 readers of his What’s Next Blog, which he updates as often as five times a day since 2003. Because that network already exists, with not one dollar spent on advertising, he was able to generate more traffic in his first three days than some major companies get after years online. Tweets can be used to drive traffic to articles, Web sites, contests, videos, and so on—if people already care about your brand, or if you have a truly original idea that people will want to share with their followers. One recent example of a Twitter-generated success is Savvy Auntie, a community for aunts, godmothers, and “other women who love kids” that was launched six months ago by Melanie Notkin. She has counted on Twitter to drive traffic, help her find suppliers, products, and even investors. She developed a Twitter following before launching her business, then tapped into it for help when she launched. 2) “Can’t I do it all in-house?.” Think again! You need strategy, contacts, tools, and experience—a combination not generally found in in-house teams, who may reinvent the wheel or use the wrong tools. It is rare indeed to find an in-house team that can not only conceive and execute a social media campaign but also drive traffic to it with effective e-mail segmentation, search optimization, blogger outreach, blog advertising, Google ads, and more. 3) You can’t measure social media marketing results. Before social media we normally measured our marketing efforts in 13-week increments. Time to ditch the 13-week plan as it does not work well in Social Media as there is so much driven by viral and search engine awareness. The 52-week campaign plan can achieve enormous rewards, as your property gets embedded into the search engines. Soon enough, search and link traffic hits a tipping point and by the second year you show up in the mainstream. 
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Master social-media-driven marketing
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