Is New Media Thriving?

Welcome to my new blog which I have started because MarCom Broadband is transitioning into a new website that will be known as MarCom New Media. For awhile I will post on both my blogs, including the other one known as the MarCom Broadband Newswire. TIP: The content needs to be 30 percent or more different if you post the same article on two blogs at one time.

Today's marketers are struggling to learn about the latest new media, otherwise known as social media, marketing applications. And as they do, people are also concerned about our current state of economic affairs. Typically during a recession people in business pull in their horns when it comes to spending advertising dollars, especially for branding and awareness campaigns. In fact, one of my new associates has been calling people who have big ads in the pages of local newspapers, educating them on how they COULD be spending their money on online tactics, which are measurable and bring better results.

Today's new media marketing is more about "people connecting" and sharing information than awareness. Because of that, interactive social media marketing is here to stay. I believe the bottom line is that it is pretty recession proof.

One reason is the cost factor. Social and new media applications include blogs and social media platforms like FaceBook or MySpace, which cost next to nothing. PRWeb releases, which are only a max. of $360 per post as opposed to more costly wires, are a gret SEO tool. Even ProfNet is a great way to get editor's attention as opposed to spending more money on media relations. I have listing with ProfNet under the health category for my client T.S. Wiley and The Wiley Protocol.

Social media is also measurable and generates leads, at which point the conversion ratios can be measured. For instance, if 3000 people come to your website and only 200 purchase a product, with the right social media tactics, you might be able to increase that number so that more people convert from lookie Lous to customers.

Email marketing and pop-up ads might also be recession-proof, as would integrated direct mail programs that direct folks to a special website (which will measure who shows up). Even Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising has its place until your SEO has time to take over, at which time you can reduce your PPC budget, and in some cases for our clients, we have illiminated PPC from the marketing mix. One client recently cut his PPC from more than $18k per mo to $0. And even more leads are coming in thanks to our excellent SEO efforts. Plus it leaves more of a budget to do social media marketing at a better price than PPC.

However none of these new media tactics will work without search engine optimization. With Flash websites, and content management software (CMS) in websites -- they are often not SEO-able. As my associate Mike Keesling says, embedded flash works, and some CMS programs are much better than others. But the bottom line, if you don't have an expert to do the keyword analysis, and recommend what keyword should be used to Meta and Title-tag your website, people who use your key words in search engines like Yahoo or Google, won't find your website. Social media marketing is about helping provide links from six ways to Sunday on the Internet, so people will find your website, and interact.