A report out this week from the Society for New Communications Research trupeted the headline “Blogging Declines as Newer Tools Rule“. As a social media blogger, it attracted my attention.

It turns out though, what’s in decline is the number of Inc. 500 companies maintaining a “corporate blog”, not businesses blogging in general. I’m not at all surprised that some large corporations are stopping using a medium that is, primarily, about building up personal relationships with regular readers through a familiar writing style, interesting topics, wit and discussion. Many corporate blogs are doomed to fail simply because of the tight constraints their authors have to work with.

What’s more interesting is that social media monitoring has not increased over the past year among Inc. 500 companies. In an area of such innovation and growth (I’ll be writing about a company that uses psychometric monitoring to identify brand affinities in the coming weeks) – it’s astonishing to think that major brands are switching off. Perhaps they’ve done what most companies seem to do and monitor before they know why or what they plan to do about it. For more thoughts on that, see my recent post on social media ROI.

As part of the launch of Constant Contact in the UK, Our Social Times is teaming up with the US-based social media marketing company to run a series of 6 free seminars. Between March and June 2012 we’ll be hosting Social Media Marketing for Small Business in London (x 2), Chelmsford, Manchester, Edinburgh and Birmingham. We plan to reach around 100,000 SMEs through our outreach and train around 1000 small businesses in the latest techniques.

Here are the dates and websites where tickets can be booked now:

• Essex – 22nd March
• London – 23rd March
• Manchester – 12th April
• London – 10th May
• Edinburgh – 29th May
• Birmingham – 14th June

All of the sessions at these events will be tailored specifically for small businesses, including:

Supercharging Your Facebook Marketing
Ron Cates – Constant Contact

It’s no secret that Facebook has become a huge part of how people interact, share ideas and recommendations, and interact with brands. But too many businesses aren’t seeing results from their Facebook marketing efforts because they are posting content without a plan for turning “fans” into customers and advocates. In this seminar, you’ll learn why Facebook is important to your business, the difference between posting and marketing, and ten tips to drive more “likes,” more “shares,” and more business.

The 7-Step Social Media Marketing Strategy
Luke Brynley-Jones – Our Social Times

I’ll be kicking of each seminar by setting out how to create a social media marketing strategy in 7 simple steps. I’ll highlight all the key questions you need to ask: Where are your customers? Which social media platforms should you focus on? Which 3rd party tools and applications do you need? Do you have the required skills? How should you manage your time? And how can you measure the results of your activities?

How to Generate New Leads on Twitter
Tammy Kahn Fennell – CEO, MarketMeSuite

Twitter is fast becoming a mainstream communication tool, so now is truly the time to integrate it into your marketing mix. In this session Tammy Kahn Fennell, CEO of social media dashboard MarketMeSuite, explains how to use Twitter to drive customer engagement and generate new leads. With guidance for novices and experienced Twitter marketers alike, this session will teach you how to run a successful Twitter marketing campaign and measure the results.

The Secret Marketeer: Tips & Tricks for Social Media Success
Panel Discussion

In this unique discussion our panel of SMEs and social media experts will confess their most secret tips and tricks to help you succeed in your marketing. Learn about Facebook’s “hidden” in-box, discover how to target local customers on Twitter, find out new ways of connecting with influencers on LinkedIn and much more. This session will give you the edge over your competitors – don’t miss it.

We’ll be posting up more details over the coming weeks.  If you’re interested in attending, please book your place now. If you’re interested in participating, either as a speaker, media partner, sponsor or exhibitor, we still have a few opportunities, so please contact us.

During the social media monitoring training course that I hosted in London last Thursday with Marshall Sponder (@webmetricsguru), he suggested an interesting approach to the question of social media ROI.

In Marshall’s view there are essentially 4 levels of maturity which dictate the degree of ROI that you should expect to get out of social media:

1. Social Media Monitoring – Listening to brand, product and industry mentions.
2. Online Research – “Operationalising” your monitoring, so that you achieve measurable targets and results.
3. Social Targeting – Using social CRM and targeting to develop stronger relationships with your customers.
4. Social Business Collaboration – Mapping this knowledge across your organisation to streamline processes and maximise benefits.

Each of these levels denotes a step forward in maturity, and the more mature your business is, the greater the ROI you’re likely to achieve from your activities – as indicated in the simplified graph above. This seems to offer a very sensible solution to a very tricky question. It might also help several million hard-pressed Marketing Managers who can now point to this list and say: “we’re only level two. No wonder we didn’t hit the jackpot”.

Marshall Sponder at his London Monitoring Course

In addition to this, Marshall offered many more pearls of wisdom.  He dismissed the counts of “social media mentions” that most monitoring tools use as the basis of their reporting, saying: “all mentions are not equal; a video is not the same as a blog post is not the same as a tweet!” When you think about it, this is obvious, but it’s amazing how many brands still monitor mentions as if they’re a homogenised  unit of value.

He also suggested that companies that monitor without knowing exactly what they hope to achieve (i.e. specific targets) and what they’ll do about it if they do/don’t achieve such targets, are wasting their time. In other words, monitoring doesn’t work unless you go into it knowing clearly what you’re hoping to find out. This is certainly not the approach of the majority of companies – many of which sign contracts with dashboard vendors before they’ve got any idea what they’re hoping to achieve from using them.

It was a fascinating day for the 25 students who joined us – and we’re now planning to run more courses, both in the UK, US and perhaps elsewhere. If you’re interested in attending one of these, please contact us.