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Local firms need to realize that marketing through social media is not about sending one-way messages, expert says

As an experienced marketer who was working in the field before the current social media boom, Craig Allen has seen many poor attempts at online marketing.

"There are a ton of companies that aren't getting it," Allen says.

The former marketing director for Saint John-based web marketing firm Evolving Solutions recently started his own business focused on helping New Brunswick companies market themselves online.

Allen says companies have to realize that marketing through social media isn't just about sending out one-way message.

"Now you have the ability to get feedback on that and have customer interaction almost instantaneously," he says.

Marcel LeBrun, the chief executive of social media monitoring firm Radian6 and one of New Brunswick's leading authorities on social media, agrees.

"Things have moved from what I call interrupt-based marketing to invitation-based marketing," he says. "It's not a place that you just jump in and bark one-way messages and jump out."

He says New Brunswick companies have aren't capitalizing on the current potential.

"It's starting to happen, it's starting to develop," Lebrun says. "But I think we're one per cent of where we could be."

Mitch Joel, the president of Montreal marketing and communications firm Twist Image and Canada's most influential man in social media according to Profectio, an online marketing publication, agrees with LeBrun that social media marketing should be an invitation, but adds the invitation comes from the consumer.

He says an effective social media marketing campaign will target a small group of enthusiasts for a product that will spread the message online.

But many companies don't realize this and just want to get a piece of the social media action, Joel says.

"People freak out and they set up these pages and no one comes to them because no one is interested," he says. "The question to ask is why? Why should you be on Facebook? Why should you be on YouTube? Why should anyone care? Once you answer the why what you're actually doing is building a strategy."

Kerry Munro, a Toronto-based consultant that quit his job as managing director of Yahoo in Canada earlier this month, agrees companies aren't seeing the big picture.

He was recently making a presentation to roughly 100 Ontario technology CEOs and asked how many of them take customer feedback, to which most raised their hands.

"Then I asked how many of you post it on the web so that others can see the great customer service that you're providing," he says. "Zero. No one put up their hand."

These weren't fortune 500 executives, "but when you look at even some of the fortune 500 companies they're not doing it either," Munro says.

With the Canadians spending on average 45 hours a week each online, and about 85 per cent of people participating in social media on a monthly basis, Munro says companies that abstain are missing out.

But Joel points out social media marketing is still relatively new.

"It's a new born baby," he says. "It's in diapers."

Queen's University marketing professor Ken Wong says it's understandable that companies aren't hopping on the social media bandwagon, at least not fully.

"I think they realize that social networks represent a relatively low cost way of getting a message out," he says. "I don't think they realize that the ongoing costs of doing it well."

He says the marketing medium needs to be studied further over time to determine which approaches work best, though he agrees simply creating a Facebook page for example without regularly updating it isn't enough.