Social Media Marketing ... Still No Love

I was reading Laurel's blog about the post she saw on BizReport about a study done by Coremetrics where they surveyed a series of companies to get their take on a breakdown of their marketing budget and where social media fell. I decided to check the post out for myself.

"78% of the marketing professionals stated that social media marketing was a way of getting an edge on their competitors"

An edge on their competitors and only 7.7% of their budget was going this direction. They say the waters are uncharted, they say it's because there's no way to measure the ROI; all valid points I guess. It comes down to what you are trying to "communicate" with the end consumer. Do you actually have a value proposition? Do you even have a great product? There are a lot of good products out there dipping their toes in the social media space and then complaining they don't have the tools to measure their return. Maybe it's not the best reason to invest in something because you think it gives you a competitive edge in your quadrant study. Here's my recommendations to the companies that are standing on the edge trying to figure out this how social media thing that's really been happening since the dawn of forums, chat rooms, bullet boards, etc:

1. Be authentic
2. Have a great product
3. Have a plan of action that includes metrics and how you are going to measure them
4. Tag everything, data is your friend
5. Know your audience, find out where they are 24 hours a day, what devices they use
6. Don't be afraid to test for 30 days and know where your money's going
7. Monitor, Optimize and Increase your touch points
8. At the end of the day, have fun doing it!

Planning is nothing without execution.