SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues.
This week, we asked: Do you attempt to blend social media into your offline marketing efforts?
- Yes 81.03%
- No 12.07%
- I don’t use social media for marketing 6.90%
More than 4-in-5 SmartBrief on Social Media readers are making the right call and using social elements in their offline ads. This can take the form of something as simple as mentioning your Twitter account on your direct mail or as elaborate as using a television commercial to encourage participation in a social media contest — and everything in between. Social media is such an effective force multiplier for all your marketing efforts that it’s downright silly to neglect to blend a little social into everything you do.
But if you really want to make the most of social media’s ability to enhance your overall marketing efforts, you’ll need to take things a step further. Don’t just name check your social efforts in non-social ads — aim to make each ad a piece of your social efforts in its own right. Give people a reason to tweet about your latest flyer. Use crowd-sourced content in your television commercials so that your fans feel a real connection to your brand. If your goal is to be a truly social business, then you can’t settle for just mentioning social in every ad — you have to make every ad truly social.