I keep hearing marketing professionals extolling the benefits of social media for businesses. I always laugh when I hear, “social media is free.” Are you kidding me, people? While I agree that signing up for accounts on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, WordPress and the like comes at no charge, social media participation for businesses is hardly free.

First, you can’t just set up these accounts, post a few things and let them sit. To maximize your efforts, you must constantly update, tweet, friend, connect, write and reply. It’s about developing and distributing fresh content that your audience will be interested in and carrying on conversations, which takes a tremendous amount of time—and, time is money.

Also, social media is about listening and reacting quickly if your brand comes up in conversations. This takes planning and diligence in monitoring, which takes time, time you pay your employees and agency partners for. At Canyon, we developed guidelines for social media participation that our employees must abide by—this document wasn’t free to develop.

Oh, and technically, since social media tools are web-based, internet connections, mobile devices and bandwidth is all paid for through your ISPs and wireless providers.

Have you been able to spend the time to maximize your social media efforts? Has your social media involvement resulted in enough return to justify the investment? Still think social media is free?

photo courtesy: www.flickr.com/photos/Sean_McColgan

My colleague Emily just wrote a great post about not bashing your competition but what about intentionally bashing yourself or your own brand? This week Domino’s Pizza unveiled a new ad campaign that takes quite a jab at its own product.

These new campaigns focus on the less positive qualities of Domino’s Pizza and boldly state ‘their crust taste like cardboard and their sauce like ketchup.’

My question is: Is it ever a good idea to bash your own brand?

Rebranding can be a challenging project for any company, but the strategy behind a rebrand is often more important than the ‘new and improved’ image. While Domino’s Pizza’s ad agency is known for making bold statements, I wonder what focus group research, if any, was done to determine that customers were unhappy with its pizza. Domino’s Pizza’s ads give the impression that Twitter was an important source of customer feedback. With the rebrand, Domino’s has tried to off-set its own harsh critics with less-obvious tactics designed to show the favorability of its new product.

What do you think of Domino’s Pizza’s marketing direction? Will customers internalize too many former negative qualities that Domino’s is bringing to light or will customers embrace the new product?

Is it just me or has the activity on Twitter slowed down? Perhaps people have run out of compelling things to say in 140 characters or less.

I mostly follow folks in the marketing and PR industry and I’ve gained a lot of insight from quite a few of them. Then, there are those that initially held some interest for me, but now their tweets consist of where and with whom they’re off to lunch today or something about their cats.

It’s like people are compelled to Tweet at least five times a day, and it’s to the point that they’ll just say anything.

Frankly, I don’t have time for 140-character musings about date night. And, I find so much more value in other social media.

So, I’ve decided to cleanse my Twitter account and streamline it to follow only the Tweeps that really deliver valuable content to my day. I know, I know many of you may say Twitter should be a mix of personal and professional, but for me I’m going all pro from here on out. And, if that makes me a Twitter snob, then so be it.

Let the cleansing begin! What about you? Are you seeing the value of Twitter diminish over time?

Dear Twitter,

Where do I begin? Life is so different since you came into the world.

I can now interface with brands and get immediate responses to my questions, comments and complaints. I can vent about annoyances and find others who share the same pet peeves. I can tell the world about the awesome service I received, the smokin’ deal I found at a shoe store or a fascinating article I read online.

And, as a B2B marketer, I can listen to and participate in conversations that are relevant to my clients’ industries and use the information to enhance their strategic marketing campaigns.

But Twitter, why haven’t YOU changed? Why are you still asking the same stale question that causes many to mock you? “What are you doing?” does not do justice to the wonderful information you can provide.

“What are you doing?” can lead to Tweets about what people have eaten for lunch and potentially even more mundane information about their day.

It’s time for a change, Twitter. How about asking something more thought provoking? I’ve prepared a list of suggestions for you to consider:

“What’s on your mind?”

“What’s new?”

“What do you think?”

Thanks for listening; I’ll talk to you soon!

xoxoxo

Tena