Social Schmocial

One of the hot topics of discussion in the marketing world is how to use social media. As Michael Gass points out in his latest newsletter, a report from the Aberdeen Group on "The ROI on Social Media Marketing" says that 63% of companies in their survey planned to increase their social media budgets this year. But what constitutes social media since its meaning seems to be changing all the time? What are the other touch points that marketers can reach consumers other than just having a Twitter Feed, Facebook/Myspace page, corporate blog, etc? Everyone seems to be getting on the bandwagon because in this economy budgets are tight and getting your customers to participate with your brand can be more cost effective than the traditional channels, especially when you consider the fact that consumers are tuning out all the advertising they're bombarded with on a daily basis. It'll be interesting to see in the coming months which marketers are successful in figuring this all out and which ones get drowned out in the conversation. And can we please come up with another term other than "social media" which has fast become old.

Roger Smith Hotel

I had a meeting today with Adam Wallace who's the new media director for the Roger Smith Hotel on Lexington Avenue between 47th and 48th Street. Chris Brogan wrote about the hotel and it piqued my interest. It's one of the few family-owned hotels in the city and they're certainly under the radar for the most part. The owner is a sculptor and you can see his work and other art throughout the hotel. They're doing some interesting work using social media to reach out to their customers and it was interesting hearing about that.