Interesting talk by DuPont’s E-Marketing Manager, Gary Spangler, explaining the strategy behind  a series of social media video clips. They are pulling in a steady audience  although the series is more than two years old. The videos came from  archives of DuPont product testing videos.

I think this underlines how you need to look to what is within your organisation which would be genuinely interesting to share with others outside. Also, there is plenty of scope for creativity when it comes to using video clips.

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It’s astonishing how quickly the marketing landscape is changing. Ten years ago it was still all about offline advertising and direct mail. Then Internet banner ads started to take off, while email made serious inroads into the snail mail business. Then along came Google to give impetus to search as a marketing channel.

Now we are seeing yet another major development, as social media comes from nowhere to figure largely in companies’ marketing strategies. A new survey by an email marketing company says that 74% of small businesses plan to up their email spend in 2010, but this is a long-established trend: for me the real story is that social media is close behind, with 66% of respondents planning to invest more in their presence on blogs and social networking sites.

This is at the expense of the other johnny-come-latelies: fewer small businesses expect to spend more on search next year, and more than a half will do no banner advertising at all.

This shift absolutely makes sense, given the enormous popularity of social media and its relative cheapness as a way of reaching large numbers of consumers with relevant messages. But it does rather make one wonder where it will all end. Will yet another new marketing channel, based on an as yet undreamed of technology, come along in a couple of years to displace social media?

I wouldn’t put any money on it, however it’s not the future we should be concerned with, but what’s happening right now. Social media offers huge opportunities, and the challenge for marketers is to see how far they can exploit them to raise brand awareness and boost sales. Still, it will be interesting to see in a couple of years time whether this new media fulfils the present high expectations.

Harvard Business Review recommends that companies develop a formal social media policy  in its latest November edition. Employees should take responsibility for their postings, clearly indicating when opinions are their own and not the firm’s. Posts should be factual and the poster’s identity disclosed.

Employees must be aware of and  respect the legal and professional framework that governs firm behaviour, Harvard Business review says.

In essence this is fine, but certain members of a company cannot just be restricted to factual comments. Members of a media team might want to challenge the interpretation that a blogger has made about a particular news development. Also, a successful social media strategy and policy involves nuturing communities; supporting people who are already your fans. You are not going to do that by just being factual.

The other point that Harvard Business Review does not address is the fact that many policies governing company communications don’t even acknowledge the existence of social media, and they therefore need to be updated, but in a way which is in tune with the culture of social media. What’s the point in companies adopting practices which, for example, could send them down the path of the music industry which fought downloads and failed to quickly adjust to the culture of social media. Companies need communications policies which satisfy legal requirements but not at the cost of alienating their online customers and causing bad relations with hugely inflential bloggers.

The great thing about social media is that there are so many enthusiasts out there who can give good advice. I recently came across this succinct piece in a Virginia newspaper, answering a question from a small business owner: ‘How can I drive more attention to my Web site without breaking the bank?

The writer identifies six essential platforms, and the specific role played by each: Linked In, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, blogs and Twitter. He usefully provides a link in each case to help find out more, for example: A great article titled “10 Ways to Make Money with MySpace” can be found at http://www.doshdosh.com/10-ways-to-make-money-with-myspace/

Anyone who wants to get a quick sense of the possibilities could do worse than follow up the links.