Simply writing a blog and pinging off tweets into the ether is about as effective as writing letters to Father Christmas.  As in advertising or promotion, you have to think first about your target market and how and where to reach them.  You need to identify the locations – networking sites, chat rooms etc – where your customers congregate and channel your output there, where you’ll find the on-line equivalent of a hot mailing list.

Then prepare a media schedule, not of press titles and broadcast stations, but of networking sites like LinkedIn, Delicious, Digg, Reddit and Stumbled Upon, all of which have their own distinct membership profile, and link your blog to events in the professional calendar – exhibitions, trade fairs, new legislation, technological advances etc – of special interest to your would be followers.

The better organised you are, the more real your dreams will become!

That’s what happens when you try to make social media do the job of traditional advertising or promotion – which many attempt to do, then wonder why their efforts meet with so little success. Repeat after me: social media is social, and to be effective must be natural, conversational and, when it comes to business, indirect.  As if you’re talking to a mate.

Of course you can – and should – use social marketing alongside traditional disciplines in an integrated marketing campaign.  Which is not to say that social media alone is ineffective in winning business.  On the contrary, it can be highly effective – when you know how and when to use it.

The traditional discipline it most resembles is public relations, and it works on much the same principle: people trust an unbiased source, and a third party recommendation carries more weight than self advertisement.

Now, fancy another pint?  I hear the Wallop’s very good.

I mention that to highlight the ephemeral nature of social media.  OK, your tweets might live on for eternity in hyperspace, but like shooting stars, they will only enjoy a brief moment of public attention.  So even if, for example, you’re Stephen Fry, with 2,500,000 followers, your tweets are only going to reach a fraction of that number at any given time, because your audience have other pressing concerns, like trying to find a plumber or running the kids to school.

And assuming that, unlike Stephen Fry, the world is not hanging on your every word, the moral of the story is to schedule your tweets at times when your audience is ready to engage – the online equivalent of water cooler moments.  For business people, that is often on the hour or half hour, when they’re coming in or out of meetings or breaking for lunch and coffee, and grabbing a moment to check on their emails etc.

Then again, if time is infinite, so is space, for which read hyperspace.  It’s a big place to get lost in.   So it follows that undirected social marketing is, if you’ll forgive the pun, a waste of space.  It’s not enough to write a blog and ping off a series of tweets into the ether.  You need to identify the locations – networking sites, chat rooms etc – where your potential customers congregate, and channel your output there, where you’ll find the on-line equivalent of a hot mailing list.

Of course, in an ideal world, you’d like potential customers to congregate at your website: this is the Holy Grail of social marketing, and towards which all your efforts should be directed.  Better that they beat a path to your door than you footslog around theirs.  But how to achieve it?

The first rule to remember is that social media is, by definition, social.  This might seem blindingly obvious, but you’d be surprised how many think they can use it in place of traditional hard-sell advertising or promotion.  You can’t.  You can – and should – use it alongside advertising and promotion in an integrated marketing campaign.  But even used on its own social marketing can be hugely effective in winning business – if you know how and when to use it.

The traditional medium social marketing most resembles is public relations, and it works on much the same principle: people trust an unbiased source, and a third party referral carries more weight than self recommendation.  Someone might, for example, appoint a supplier on the basis of a tip from a colleague on the golf course.

Once all business was done this way.  Nowadays people have a wider pool of experience to draw on, and tend to search for ‘expert’ advice on the web.

All that you have to do is set yourself up as that expert.  Just remember that you’re not a sales person, you’re an adviser, an explainer, a sharer of news, views and practical tips about your area of expertise.  People are hungry for information of that sort, and will read all you care to write in that vein – which should be plenty.  If you’re a greengrocer, for example, blog about how to tell if a melon is ripe, how to prepare a pineapple for the table, or share your Aunt Mabel’s recipe for homemade strawberry jam (the ingredients for which you just happen to be able to supply!)

Do it regularly and often enough and your reputation will spread far and wide. Your tweets will find their target, your website will become a by-word for high class provisions – or  whatever it is you specialise in – and your fame, trust me on this, will last a lot longer than 15 minutes!

This is a pity because, as with so many things in life, perseverance pays off.  Social marketing is similar to public relations in as much as it’s a gradual image building exercise.  It has a cumulative effect that builds to a tipping point where your reputation precedes you, and customers begin to seek you out rather than the other way around.

In the meantime, you’ve got to hang on in there and drip feed them on a diet of news, informed opinion and ‘how-to-do-it’ tips in your area of expertise.  Involve them and they’ll involve you.

As to ‘not having time for all that’, there’s no rule that says social marketing has to be the sole responsibility of one person in the company or organisation.  In fact it’s more effective if 100 people devote 1% of their time to it than if one person devotes 100% of his or hers.  If that still presents  a challenge, we have people who can ghost write blogs and emails for you!

It’s worth remembering that when you post articles on your blogs and tweet your tweets.  The latter have a lifespan of about 15 minutes on Twitter, before they’re confined to the archives, from which they’re rarely exhumed again.

The point is to time them to catch your followers when they’re there to receive them – live – which for business people is generally when they come in or out of meetings, or break for lunch or a coffee, and take a moment to catch up with their emails.  Catch them then and you catch them good.

Even Lady Gaga and Stephen Fry have to compete for time and attention with their followers’ partners, children and employers.  So pick your tweeting times carefully.  Having an astronomical following is meaningless if no-one’s there when you call!

Playing a wide variety of instruments and singing a lot of their own songs Corryvreckan love to engage with their audience and always enjoy a little light-hearted banter.

The band wanted a site that reflected the Celtic image of their music, where they could share photographs, biographies, and video’s of their performances that were hosted on YouTube. They also wanted an integrated social media strategy where band members could use Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and Bebo to promote themselves, and inform their fans of upcoming gigs. Finally, they needed a contact form to gather enquiries, which automated processes utilising auto-responders that forwarded the enquiries to each of the band members, and automatically sent a thank you email to the visitor for their enquiry. the When they release their album we will also be integrating the site with iTunes, so watch this space!

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Ian is one of the few people who has that rare ability to successfully combine technical skill with artistic vision in such a way that creates exceptional and stunning web and blog sites. He doesn’t just build websites he brings them to life and when I asked him to build me a website for my celtic folk band – Corryvreckan – I was amazed at the results. Integrating ‘You Tube’ and a gig diary with a band profile and a wealth of other links in a framework that perfectly encapsulates the band ethos and celtic theme exceeded all my expectations, bringing our marketing into the 21st century. This man is a genius! www.corryvreckanfolkband.com

Ken Hirons The Corryvreckan Folk Band

Like many of us, Larry is short of time and wanted something that would be simple and quick to maintain, and he didn’t have either the time, or the patience to learn any new technical skills.

Larry is a highly active member of a scuba diving club and is active on many diving forums, and also a member of various social networking site. He stipulated that he wanted to be able to use his blog to broadcast his posts across all his networks at the click of a mouse.

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I’m a passionate diver, I love diving on wrecks, and I lead a very busy life. I wanted something that would easily and simply enable me share my passion with others in such a way that it wouldn’t eat into my time, and my SuperBlog allows me to do just that.  www.arrowbi.co.uk

Larry Lloyd Arrow BI

She also records, edits and publishes video on YouTube, and has produced election campaign videos for Conservative politicians, as well as private clients. She works with specialists who are experienced and professional in their field of expertise.

When Ellee came to us she had over 1000 articles and many hundreds of images and video clips on her existing blog site. We helped her move everything over to the new SuperBlog II platform, and incorporated all of her social media marketing activities including her image galleries on Flickr and video’s on YouTube.

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I would like to thank you for my new professional website. I was amazed to find I had written almost 1,000 posts on my old blog, and with all the pictures and videos, there was an incredible amount of content, and thank you for helping me to transfer everything over. It means that although I still have all of my precious blog content, the main focus is now on my professional skills. Thank you so much for such a professional job, which has resulted in receiving very positive feedback. It has exceeded all my expectations. www.elleeseymour.com

Ellee Seymour Proactive PR

But the newly released Dulux dog commercial – which incidentally marks the 50th anniversary of this advertising icon – indicates otherwise. Us admen hate to admit it, but the industry’s most potent secret weapon is the ‘ah’ factor – a generous dollop of sentimental mush.

Think of the Dulux dog’s cringe worthy stable mates, the Andrex puppy and the PG Tips chimps, and you’ll see what I mean. They’re all soppy enough to make Bambi seem hard-boiled, but of their branding power there can be no question. In fact, so successful have they become that a weird transference has taken place: Old English Sheepdogs are now universally known as Dulux dogs – even by the Kennel Club – and Labradors are forever festooned in pink toilet tissue.

In some ways this breed of advertising is a bit like acupuncture: a quasi-science that seems to work, but we’re not quite sure why or how. OK, we know it has an emotional appeal, but it’s not exactly reducible to a scientific formula.

Speaking of which brings me to quasi- or pseudo-scientific advertising, which is still flavour of the month in shampoo advertising. Pantene were recently hauled up by the short and curlies when a professional chemist phoned to ask them what they meant by their ‘unique pro-vitamin formula’ and how it worked. Pantene took this as their cue for a quick wash-and-go!

Colgate toothpaste used to be a great one for blinding them with science. Their secret ingredient, you may remember, was ‘activated Gardol’ (whatever that may be), which ‘in university controlled tests was a proven leader in fighting tooth decay’. We admen do love our jargon, don’t we? That one might even qualify as an ‘affirmative disclosure’ (i.e. putting a positive spin on bad news, in this case you’re at risk of tooth decay but we’ve got the answer).

In the same category you might include Colgate’s famous ‘ring of confidence’ (don’t let bad breath ruin your pulling power) and Horlicks’ cure for ‘night starvation’. What a wonderful invention that was, incidentally: a non-existent malady that the advertiser had thoughtfully provided the remedy for! If you haven’t got an obvious product benefit, make one up. Or as Alistair Crompton, a former Saatchi & Saatchi copywriter used to advise: “If you’ve got something to say, say it, but if you’ve got nothing to say, use showmanship”.

You may not realise it, but in the search for something – anything – to say about an otherwise bland product, us copywriters have added immeasurably to our culture and language. No, really. Think of ‘va-va-voom’, ‘being tangoed’, ‘service with a smurf’ and ‘reaching the parts other beers cannot reach’ – all agreeable bits of nonsense worthy of Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear.

Science it may not be. But art it most definitely is

If there’s a lesson in that for humble business bloggers like ourselves, it’s this: don’t be bland. Be a personality, have an opinion and express it. That doesn’t mean you have to get yourself up like a circus performer or dance naked in the fountain at Trafalgar Square (although they would certainly arrest attention, if not get you arrested!)

But you do want to stand out from the competition, and ‘being yourself’ in public is one of the best ways to do it. If you want a more sensible model from the media, think of top press columnists like AA Gill in the Sunday Times or Polly Toynbee in the Guardian. They put their own unique spin on the news and arts, and whether you agree with them or not (I disagree with them both violently at times) you go out and buy their papers for the privilege of doing so!

Take a leaf out of their book and dare to be different – controversial even – but always engaging.