The Marketing Sherpa just released the 2010 Social Media marketing report. In this report, as mentioned on Social Media Today, so-called social marketing budgets are set to rise across just about every industry sector. A graph shows that a high number of respondents intend to increase their social media marketing budgets.
The interesting finding is that respondents seem to be more attracted by social media quick fixes like microblogging, and less by heftier operations that require more efforts like blogging:
From the Marketing Sherpa:
The most effective tactic shown in the chart above – blogger relations – is used by far fewer organizations than less effective tactics primarily because of the effort required. This focus on “fast and easy” versus effectiveness is a problem that is far more prevalent with organizations in the trial phase of social marketing maturity than with more advanced social marketers working from a strategic social marketing plan.
This is an interesting report. In more than two years of selling Social Media marketing services, I have noticed the same trend: No one is feeling the blogging thing, simply because it gives too much to think about: Design, editorial strategy, SEM strategy, measures of success, comment moderation, SMO, crisis situations… On the other hand, a majority of people like the Youtube video idea, because it is visually self-explanatory, and it’s easy to share.
On the other end, I don’t talk with a lot of companies interested in microblogging. Microblogging is still an obscure new tool, and if a lot of folks are ready to invest more in microblogging, it is probably because it is way cheaper to handle a Twitter account than it is to handle a whole blog. Respondents find that bloggers’ relations require too much effort. It sure does, which is exactly why I think it should be heavily invested by whoever is serious about Social Media marketing: Knowing bloggers in a niche is the biggest asset a company will gain from a social media marketing campaign. Bloggers are the pulse of news online. If those bloggers know your business and the people behind it, they will respect it, sometimes mention it, and listen to its official messages. I hope that this microblogging craze will soon slow down, because marketers need to realize how a social media marketing campaign lacks a backbone if it does not comprise a bloggers’ relations strategy.