By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth

Social Media marketing will be critical to your businesses success moving forward. If you don’t have a well conceived and deftly executed social media strategy it will be difficult to drive brand equity in an ever increasing consumer driven market. Our social media practice is the fastest growing segment of our business simply because of the demand-side pull from the market place. Consumers won’t engage with companies and brands they do not trust, and in today’s world trust is most effectively established via social validation on the Internet. How times have changed…

If you’re still of the opinion that social media is not ready for prime time think again…Earlier this week Coca-Cola announced the creation of a new office of digital communications and social media within its public affairs and communications department. Clyde Tuggle, SVP of corporate affairs and productivity at Coke, noted “mass media is declining in importance…Our future success depends on our continued ability to connect people to our brands and our Company all around the world, one person at a time.” Tuggle also stated “Our new office of digital communications and social media will help us become even more comfortable and effective in these new spaces.”

Wells Fargo is also a big believer in social media as a marketing platform. They were early adopters to social media and The Wells Fargo Blog has been groundbreaking in many ways as far as the banking sector is concerned.  You can always tell an oganization’s committment to an initiative by who they place in charge of it. Wells Fargo has had a Vice President of Social Media since 2005. They don’t just talk the talk, they walk the walk…These are just two examples of how some of the largest brands on the planet are shifting their thinking…less TV and print and more Internet.

If you think Squidoo, Del.icio.us, and Furl are foreign language vocabulary references, if your company doesn’t embrace blogging or the use of viral videos, if you’re not leveraging LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or any number of other valued social media platforms then you are already way behind the curve. Your current and future customers are looking for you online, and if you’re not there they will simply select one of your competitors who is.

What we find in working with many companies in developing their social media marketing strategy is not that they haven’t heard of it, but rather that they don’t know where to start. The biggest issue for most companies is that social media requires active management and coordination between platforms, which in turn requires an understanding of the medium, and also a significant amount of time and resources. The landscape is confusing for the uninitiated, and is further complicated due to the rapidly evolving nature of social media technology.

You can find more information on social media marketing by viewing other posts in this category. Bottom line…Go social or go home.