Interview With Lon Safko About Social Pulse 2011 Conference Topics

Lon Safko, author of The Social Media Bible

Recently, John Cass, Head of Digital Marketing here at Pace, had a chance to talk via podcast with Lon Safko, author of The Social Media Bible and the speaker at the Social Pulse 2011 conference in Las Vegas later this spring. The conference will be focused on corporate social media, and Lon will be giving a keynote on the return on investment (ROI) of social media marketing, as well as leading a workshop on LinkedIn.

John first asked Lon how he thinks people in corporate America should think about ROI for social media today. He said, “The bottom line is that really social media marketing is marketing. It’s just a new set of tools, a slightly different way of doing it, a little bit of different physiology—but when it gets right down to it, it's still marketing.”

Regarding his keynote presentation, John wondered if Lon would be looking into social CRM and how to use CRM products to measure the return on investment from social media. Lon agreed that social CRM is most important because social media allows you to connect with your customer in a new way and improve customer relations. Because of social media, Lon says, “Customers are demanding corporations to have this two-way communication. And this loops back around to the CRM. It loops back around to customer support and customer care. If you ask me if Social Media should be part of marketing, public relations or customer service, it belongs in customer service because they get it.”

For companies who use or want to use social media to communicate with their customers, what kind of strategy should they be using? Lon says that “the most important thing is to come up with a sound strategy for your social media, but also integrate that strategy with your existing marketing. It has to be completely integrated. So, yeah, creating a Facebook page is a great idea. Do you have it on your business card? Is it on your letterhead?  Is it on your product labels? You have to completely integrate social media marketing with your conventional marketing techniques.”

Great advice from Lon Safko.

-compiled by Katie Ostrowka

Posted By: Digital Trends Team