Plurkshop #2: Blending Traditional And Social Media

Last night’s plurkshop opened with a great question from Beth Harte, who asked “Would you use traditional marketing to promote your social media efforts and vice versa?”

A great discussion ensued (hooray for threaded conversations), and it seems participants agreed that social media and traditional marketing should work together, and using some traditional avenues to drive traffic to social media sites can still be an effective awareness builder.
The main takeaways from last night:

• Social media should be integrated into an overall marketing plan whenever possible.

• Traditional marketing tactics like e-mail (yes, we all laughed about e-mail being “old school”), direct mail, and print advertising can still have a place in the social mediascape when used to really engage an audience and drive them to great content and information online.

• Traditional media is in fact still going to be necessary and very relevant for audiences that haven’t yet embraced online and social media outlets – older audiences, rural and non-broadband users, or simply late adopters. We all agreed that although all of us are very active in this space, we’re still in the minority.

• The trend is toward more spending on new media, while spending on traditional media continues to decrease. A recent report by Forrester expects that interactive advertising spending will move from an 8% share in 2007 to an 18% share in 2008. Overall, they’re predicting that total interactive marketing spending will surpass $61 billion in five years. Whoa.


And some great examples of Plurkshop attendees and their experiences with the blending of traditional and social media:

• Beth’s company is in a niche market, so she’s planning to leverage some traditional outreach like direct mail or e-mail marketing to drive adopters to a new social platform she’s considering. And, she's working social media planning into her overall planning efforts as a single marketer in the company (you go, Beth!).

• Michael Jones’ newspaper publisher did multi-page spreads in all four of their papers to promote their new website. The result: The day the site launched, they got more visitors than the publisher did papers. And even the 60-year old owner is doing podcasts. Talk about embracing a new medium!

• McDonald’s is running a TV ad campaign right now that by pointing viewers to a MySpace page that’s part of the campaign, encouraging them to submit a new Big Mac jingle. (Thanks to Mack Collier for the heads up.) They’ve also got podcasts on their main website about "The McDonald's You Don't Know", and investor relations issues. They still have that sorta-corporate ring to them, but a solid effort nonetheless.

• Frank Martin’s local newspaper in Roanoke, VA (The Roanoke Times), and several news outlets in Connie Reece’s hometown of Austin, TX are using accounts on Twitter to send links to local news stories and editorial. All of us rather agreed that newspapers are still a little awkward with their participation, but we all heartily endorsed their effort to embrace this tidal wave of social media.

• Andre Natta’s hyperlocal paper, The Terminal, in Birmingham, AL was the first in its market to use Twitter, and the result was markedly more readers for the paper. They use MySpace to update readers and point them to particular stories and news items. And, they’re about to use Facebook and MySpace to promote an event and drive viewers to their blog for more information. They’re still using email marketing too, with great success.

• Deb Robison used Facebook and MySpace to promote a fashion show called Frock Out! Denver for the Denver Library. Some models and designers from the show were on the sites, too, and helped to spread the word. The success was in getting kids to invite their friends and pass the word – and interestingly, the audience spanned the generations. At the event, they actually had to turn people away! Here’s the link to the video they posted on YouTube to promote the event. The best part? Out of pocket costs were zero (just Deb’s invaluable time), and the exposure got them some great press (Denver Post stories were even picked up by news outlets) and large corporate sponsors for this year’s event. What a success story!

The resounding conclusion for our Plurkshop was that traditional media and new media need to work together in this environment to really have success, and social media can be a powerful asset, indeed. As the landscape continues to change, we all need to remember that the point of social media is in connecting people to other people and giving them ways to reach out into the community. It’s not the technology, it’s a very human desire to connect that will continue to drive folks online.

As Connie is fond of saying, “Technologies change, people don’t”.

Want to join us for a Plurkshop? Get your Plurk persona rolling and look for the thread counter that keeps ticking up! Stay tuned for updates from upcomig Plurkshops.