On Feb. 2, the four Tweet Race teams will leave New York, L.A., Chicago and Tampa in specially outfitted Mercedes-Benz vehicles, and head to Superbowl XLV in Dallas. They’ll be directed and fueled by people’s tweets along with help from team coaches who have large numbers of Twitter followers. Fellow tweeters are invited to join a team and help tweet to them with race clues and tips.  V.I.P. trips for two to numerous MB sponsored events can be won by these tweet helpers, along with other prizes. Winning is more than just getting there first. It’s also the largest number of active Twitter helpers and a few other social media measurements. Oh, and the winning team? They each get a 2012 C-Class Coupe.

The team coaches aren’t just people with a large number of Twitter followers either, they’re celebrities from various industries. Musicians, athletes and TV stars. If their team wins, $25k goes to their favorite charity.

So, while the main media platforms (Twitter and Facebook) are free, let’s add up what this whole campaign will probably cost MB USA. Celebrity involvement, an easy $400k. Putting four MB’s into the race, at least $200k. Two winning C-Class coupes, $80k. Winning coaches charity of choice donation, $25k. Cost of coming up with the idea, developing and managing the entire campaign, probably $1 million. Paid online advertising banners to help promote the campaign, around $500k.  Total cost of this FREE Media campaign that will probably involve 8 million active participants for 7 days, about $2.25 Million. Will it ultimately do better for Mercedes-Benz than their $6 million dollar Super Bowl ad planned for 4th quarter of this year’s game that has an anticipated 150 million viewers? Time will tell, but that’s not the point of this post.

The point is that marketers should start thinking differently about how they will be paying for online campaigns in this new world of free media. Historically, an ad campaign followed its own 80/20 rule. 80% of the campaign costs would go toward buying the media (TV, radio, print, outdoor, etc) and 20% would go toward developing and producing the creative. Although that 20% could be more or less, depending on the agency and the production value, the idea is that the majority of the expense would pay for the media.

In the new world of social media, that 80% is either substantially lower or gone completely. It’s obvious how advantageous this can be for smart marketers, but the challenge of creating a campaign using social media that draws interest and interaction takes a whole new level of brain power and creativity, a skill that a lot of agencies today don’t have, be they digital or traditional. Brain power and creativity that can succeed in taking a non-intrusive form of communication and make the right people want to view it, hear it and get involved with it is the greatest challenge in this new day. And that has a few Clio award-winning creatives asking for early retirement.

Although this post is not meant to be a self-promotion for Brandtailers, it is interesting to understand why we have more easily adapted and succeeded in this new world.  Over our twenty plus years in business we’ve had more clients with small budgets than not. We’ve rarely had the luxury of letting the media weight do the job. For us, it’s always been the need to flex our creative idea muscles to help make something come alive and work without a lot of media support. It’s kind of like we’ve been training for the Olympics for a long time and it’s finally here.

But back to the purpose of this post: Let’s all help each other understand the new opportunities as well as the realities of what is truly needed in today’s marketing. Big media budgets may still be around for the recovering 10% of advertisers, but the other 90% is demanding success without major media dollars. Is it possible? We think so. We’ve been doing it for a long time. Our mantra has always been, “It’s the idea, stupid.” Feel free to use it.

Yet ads on TV are more intrusive and offer instant audio-visual impact, as compared to Facebook ads which initially appear to be more like static print ads. While TV ads can be fast-forwarded, ads on Facebook can be equally ignored. So which has the leg-up? That’s yet to be determined. Advertising on Facebook has not been very successful when comparing their typical banner-type ads to other forms of advertising. And yet it offers an entirely new form of advertising via social media style posts that are, in fact, promotional messages delivered through a non-promotional platform.

For example: Take the promotional element of a Meet-Up being endorsed via a Facebook post. The Meet-Up may very well be a modern day Tupperware party but, because of the communication tool it was promoted with, it really doesn’t feel like an advertisement.  But is this an ad? YOU BET.

It’s all about the new way of looking at marketing communications. It seems that what’s old is new again. Case in point, when Wilbur Jones hammered a paper flier into a telephone pole in Middleton, Connecticut in 1872 with a message telling everyone he was auctioning off his 30 pigs at the local Grainery Friday night, that was an advertisement. And when Susie Smith publishes a Facebook post that she’s having a Tupperware party at her house Friday night from 6pm to 8pm, that’s an advertisement. The only thing missing is the advertising agency and the media costs.

Interesting perspective, eh? What would TV ads have been like if anyone could have promoted their own ad? More to come on this thought process….

For business owners still trying to figure out why their company should use a Facebook Page for marketing strategy, here’s one great reason. According to a recent Mashable article, the average Facebook user who “Likes” your page has more than double the average number of friends. In social networking math, this means your name/brand/offer has more than twice the chance to be seen thanks to avid Facebook “Likers”. In fact, remember good old math problems like what does 100 squared equal? Yup. That’s the power of the “Like” button.

Facebook reports messages from publishers saying that when these users visit your Facebook Page and your website, “they are more engaged and stay longer because their real identity and real friends are driving the experience through social plugins.” As an example, NHL.com reported that pages per user was up by 92%, time on-site was up by 85%, video viewing increased by 86% more videos and overall visits went up by 36%.

For businesses still holding back from developing a Facebook Page, we suggest you stop asking why and start asking how. How can you turn your Page into a secondary website for your business, with plug-ins and content that your audience will stick around to read and interact with? How do you build a Page that can show up high in Search Engine results? And how do you get your target audience to complete whatever transaction your business needs via Facebook?

It’s happening every day with Facebook Pages like Sears, Ford, Target and even small businesses like Bubbles Car Wash and Wahoo’s Fish Tacos. Remember, these days people want to engage with businesses. They want to like you, but it’s your responsibility to give them the reasons why they should. The days of success revolving around the largest share of voice, the lowest price, or the longest running business success story are coming to an end. Fine tune your target audience down to where they “hang out” on line, learn what they want to hear from you, then give them something to talk about (hopefully good!). If you do it right, you’ll see the only button more powerful in the online world than “Like” is “Share“.

1. Keep giving and contributing more than the competition. Pay back will be huge.
2. Every tweet, blog entry, comment and status update will be saved forever and is permanently part of your brand.
3. Before permission to market comes permission to connect. There’s a lot of trust building in between.
4. Make it easy for people to find you. While you’re out looking for business there is an entire market looking for you.
5. It’s not about B2B or B2C it’s about person to person marketing in social media.
6. Use the back links function in Google to see who is linking to your competitors. Reach out to those connectors.
7. Go wide with social media then build strong deep networks by going deep with the phone, Skype, webinars or in-person.
8. Twitter search and tools like Twellow.com can dampen the noise down from millions on voices to the exact ones you’re targeting.
9. Picking a fight publicly stays on record long after the battle is done. Rarely is it worth it.
10. Not getting the results you want? Are you asking for help often enough? It’s about community. Reach out.
11. Share and give more than you think is practical… then do it again. It will build positive momentum for your brand.
12. When partnering with other social media influencers start by making sure your values and principles are aligned.

Remember the days when you had a best friend, and then maybe 5 or 6 other close friends? That circle was enough, wasn’t it? Spending quality time with them was usually very rewarding.

Now we move to the digital age. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn and others, where popularity is based on the number of friends, connections, how many people “like” you or your business, or how many places you’re the “Mayor”. And heaven forbid if you show only a few!

Obviously it’s easier to have more friends these days. And easier to stay in touch. For one thing, you can talk to all of them at the same time via most of these social media tools. And it doesn’t matter where they are. Heck, it doesn’t even matter what language they speak because Google will translate it with one simple click.

But, what’s happening to the quality of friendships? Quantity is often forced to replace quality in the digital world unless you want everyone in your growing circle to know the finite details of your life that you might otherwise only share with a few close confidants.

Time will tell how this new world of mass-connections pays off. No one can say at this point. But we do know that society is changing because of this technology. What we need to remember along the way is that it’s a choice we make, not a mandate.

Every day we hear business owners say, “I know I have to do this Social Media stuff. I know it’s a great way to do business. But I don’t know where to start. I don’t know how. And where am I going to find the time?” No kidding.

Can someone else do it for you? Yes, most likely. Do you have to be extremely cautious handing it off? You bet. Unfortunately there are a lot of snake oil gurus out there today taking advantage of what you don’t know. Here’s our advice: If you find someone, or some company, that touts their social media expertise and they have a website that lets you “just sign up” and takes your credit card, or tells you they can help you without ever meeting you, without ever spending time with your company, without truly proving they understand your industry, leave skid marks on their home page.

No matter how much expertise a person or business may have in the technology of social media, it is pointless unless they strategize, customize and personalize it for you. They also need to work with you to draw a line in the sand and say, “These are the things we can do for you, on your behalf – and these are the areas we will need to turn over to you because they absolutely must come from inside your organization.”

Most businesses are determining that a lot of this new world of social media can effectively be outsourced. It’s faster, cheaper and better. How the heck can you even hire someone for a position that you don’t know how to train for, monitor, or judge? How do you know they’re keeping up on the daily changes and technological advances available to make this whole thing work even better if you’re not on top of it yourself? That’s the challenge many companies are realizing.

The real experts will become more and more obvious. And yes, in full disclosure, we believe our Online Brand Managers are true experts. But that’s because they spent a lot of time becoming experts. And they continuously spend a lot of time getting to know our clients businesses as if they were employed by them.

If you want to try your chances at catching flies with chopsticks, by all means, give it your best shot. But when you get tired of wasting time, look for Mr. Miyagi.

As many savvy marketers have already noted, all media is social. Especially when it works the way it’s supposed to. So what’s all the buzz about this term, social media, as if it’s a completely new form of communication?

Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Stumble Upon, etc. are just new communication tools. Tools that will most likely change and morph into new formats as technology advances and they improve their ability to create, manage and grow powerful online communities. Remember forums, chat rooms, even My Space? They’re all just tools that have enabled multiple-way communication, the core of what has changed.

We believe the term, social media, will go into the history books sooner vs. later. At least we hope so.

So guess what’s happening? People are starting to turn off and tune out. Especially those who’ve been trying to figure out how to listen over the past two years, when the amount of online noise has increased ten-fold. Oh sure, Facebook is growing. But users are becoming much more selective about who they friend. Meanwhile other tools, like Twitter and Friend Feed, are seeing 20% of their subscribers making 80% of the noise.

In short, quality over quantity is the new trend.

This is good news for smart marketers. With the proper tools you can find your perfect customers and they’ll be able to hear you. You won’t be fighting the equivalent of 1,300 daily traditional media messages the average American didn’t ask to see but the advertisers still paid for. Marketers will get to enjoy quality over quantity too.

Let’s see what happens when the noise quiets down and people start using all these wonderful (yet currently loud) online tools more effectively. It should be the best time good marketers have ever had.

Why is this worth blogging about? Because one of my goals with these blogs is to break down the barriers between those that understand what social media and the online world has to offer, and those that don’t know where to begin learning. I would love for everyone to be like this gentleman I met today.  His fascination with the opportunity was so great that his intimidation was irrelevant. We all need to be like this.

One of my favorite sayings is “Do not compare yourselves to others, for there will always be those greater and lesser than yourself.” I am challenged with daily intimidation by those who know so much more than me regardng the online world of marketing. But unless I turn around and offer what I do know to those who are still learning, then it’s all been worthless. So I will.

Don’t be afraid to ask, learn, and be confused. It’s coming at you whether you want it to or not. I hope your fascination will drive you.