5 Social-Media Marketing Insights

A newly released white paper from Advertising Age delves into the do's and don'ts of marketing for SMBs.The report, called "What small and midsize businesses need to know about marketing: Your questions answered," presents answers from advertising and marketing executives to five essential questions. One of them was how smaller companies can best leverage social media.

Here's what Phil Johnson, CEO of PJA Advertising and Marketing, had to say:

1) SMBs can't afford to ignore social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. They've changed the face of communication. 2) Social media is not a panacea. Social networking does not replace good, traditional marketing, but it does work very well as part of an overall strategy. SMBs still need to research and understand their positions in the marketplace and how and where they want to engage potential and existing customers. 3) Make Twitter a part of your social media strategy. Every company should at least use Twitter to listen to customers and monitor the competition. You can follow the conversations that are taking place in the marketplace and then figure out how to get involved. 4) Focus more on content that people will want to share and less on typical promotional material. Content is the lifeblood of social media. 5) Develop a mobile strategy for social media. The overlap between mobile users and the social web continues to grow; more and more users are accessing the social web from a mobile device. Any social media strategy should be grounded in mobile communication.

Stay tuned for more from this white paper.