Just back from the 2009 Forrester Marketing Forum in Orlando and it was definitely a valuable learning experience. Although the theme of the event was ostensibly, “Using The Down Economy To Catalyze Market Change”, it became obvious fairly early on that social media in general, and Twitter in particular, had stolen the show.

Literally not a single session went by where Twitter was not mentioned or discussed outright. Often other social media solutions were discussed as well. Furthermore, during every significant session the entire front row of chairs was taken up by folks tweeting on every bit of interesting information a speaker said. (You can locate many of these tweets with the tag #FMF09.) The obvious conclusion was that these marketers, from some of the leading corporations in America, clearly feel that social media has huge potential.

Seemingly in contrast to that, I was struck by the core message of the CMO of a major telecom provider who said, “In a down economy, don't throw levers wildly.” In other words: stick with what works. On the face of it, that might be interpreted to mean we should ignore all the hype about social media marketing and stick to our knitting.

But I don’t feel that’s the correct interpretation. Social media channels are revolutionary in some ways, but in many ways they are simply an extension of what good marketers have been doing for years. We have always listened to the wants and needs of our customers and prospects (via market research and customer service), connected our customers together (via events and online forums), built our brands (via print, television, and other media), and generated leads and sales (via direct marketing vehicles).

What’s exciting about social media methodologies is that it's possible to do all of these things in ways that are often quicker and less expensive than more traditional methods. When combined with highly effective and measurable online marketing methodologies such as email marketing and search engine marketing, the power of each of these is magnified. At Lyris we're so convinced of this that we've recently added even more social media capability to Lyris HQ. For more information, see our recent press release.

So, engaging strongly in social media is not throwing levers wildly. It is simply using the levers we have long used, but more effectively and more inexpensively than ever before.

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About the Author

Blaine Mathieu is chief marketing officer for Lyris, Inc. Blaine is responsible for Lyris' brand and product strategy, including driving marketing initiatives for the company's Lyris HQ™ integrated-marketing suite and its Lyris ListManager™ email-marketing software.

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