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Why A Multi Channel Social Media Marketing Strategy Creates More Buzz

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Categories: Multi Channel Social Media Marketing

So you want to launch a book, an album, promote a play, market a new movie or advertise your business. Multiple Social Media Marketing Channels

In traditional mass media marketing you will find that  many different marketing channels are used as part of the marketing strategy to get the word out there, to ensure that the “Word Of Mouth” is happening and that vital buzz is generated as people  share the latest news with their groups and networks about a great movie or music whether that be off line or online.

Movies like Avatar with large budgets leave no stone unturned  as they go all out to ensure that they are using as many effective marketing channels as possible to drive “Buzz” and use

  • Television
  • Radio
  • Billboards
  • Facebook
  • Newspapers
  • Inflential bloggers
  • YouTube
  • Twitter

amongst many to ensure that the movie is a hit at the box office.

I was recently reading a book called “Buzz – Real Life Lessons In Word-Of-Mouth Marketing” by Emanuel Rosen and he mentions  two terms that are vital for creating Buzz for your marketing and advertising campaigns.

  1. “Volume” of Buzz – this is the  quantity of Buzz whether that be within one type of group or spread across many different groups
  2. “Dispersion” of Buzz – this where the “Buzz” is within many groups and networks and widely dispersed

He goes on to say that  “Dispersion ” is vital as it stops “Buzz” being trapped within just a few groups or  even one.

He mentions that the more successful marketing campaigns have the widest dispersion and it is better to have posts in four groups than to just have for example 201 posts or mentions within only one group

The strategy of  implementing and engaging with as many traditional marketing channels as possible in your marketing campaign as your budget allows also applies to your use of social media channels in your marketing efforts.

I recently ran a poll titled “How Many Social Media Channels Do You Use For Your Brand?” and the results from the current 143 people who have participated and their comments were quite revealing.

The current results stand at

One Channel:  2

Two Channels: 12

Three Channels: 44

Four channels: 23

Five Channels: 22

Six Channels: 15

Seven Channels: 7

Eight Channels: 2

Nine Channels: 4

Ten Channels: 1

More Than Ten Channels: 11

The most commonly used number of social media channels is three but there are quite a few companies using more than ten (8%) which certainly surprised me.

One of the comments from Fujitsu the large Japanese Technology conglomerate shows an example of best practice with multiple social media channels (Fujitsu currently uses 15 social media accounts and channels)

Fujitsu's Multiple=

The use of the multiple channels ensures that your news and content and marketing is not trapped within one insular group and has the best chance of spreading.

What are your experiences with multiple channel social media marketing?


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  • http://www.awarenessnetworks.com Robin Hopper

    Great post Jeff… There’s a report that Charline Li/Altimeter did a while back that’s worth a read if yiu haven’t seen it. It correlated a multi-channel approach to social engagement with financial performance: http://www.engagementdb.com

  • http://www.netspray.com Social Media Marketing

    Social media marketing has been showing great impact on present marketing trends! Though there are many websites saying about the quality of social media marketing, I wonder, still there are countless useless social profiles with no updates or activities involved!One can build brand via authentic interactions using social profiles! But when you are not genuine you cannot expect credibility!

    • http://www.banburyshireinfo.co.uk ian

      You are absolutely right; the key to the door is authentic interactions. The same as face to face, telephone, email etc.

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  • http://www.mediamensch.com Andrew Kaplan

    Thanks for sharing these insights. There is still a large gap in how to create a truly integrated social media marketing campaign. As someone who works with filmmakers and authors on social media, one of the issues what do you do and how much time do you spend after the first few months, especially when you are onto the next project.

  • http://throughanewlens.wordpress.com Through a New Lens

    Great post! It’s ironic that you would re-post this today, I’m working on a post about a similar idea and will post it tomorrow, but I’ll definitely link to you.

    Thanks for the great insights.

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  • http://mindclay.tv Graham Pocialik

    Jeff,

    I love this post. We are in the development stages for an awareness building campaign and we are utilizing about five channels. I’d like to say we had suggested more. Developing a strategy on how those integrate w/ each other is truly important. Just as important is the content that is being dispersed across those channels. Don’t ask yourself “what are we doing on facebook”, but “why are we on facebook.” Each of those channels offers a different way to consume media and are utilized by consumers for different purposes.

    Keep up the great blog!

  • http://SocialMediaBuzzer.com Volker Jaeckel (a/k/a VJ)

    Tremendous insight here, and yes, I agree with multi channel Social marketing efforts. I am living in the Automotive Industry and the newest trend here is as well to have more then just Facbeook, Twitter and YouTube as recommended mediums.
    To help with efforts in the so necessary SEO I advice to look even into Flickr (or similar) and of Blogging for dealers. It would be helpful for dealerships to have at least 8 channels to creating buzz and conversations.

    As always Jeff, fantastic Blog post!

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  • http://www.clickmarkets.net/ avm123

    Creating buzz signifies an essential worth which is to facilitate awareness. Social media plays as a powerful tool in spreading information. The different channels are capable of providing a room for direct interactions that is just as valuable I think as what word of the mouth offers.

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  • http://pradical.org Doug Ragan

    Thanks for this — “channels” gives me a whole knew understanding of how to utilize social media more effectively.

  • http://econsultancy.com Matt Owen

    Really interesting post Jeff. I’ve been following a conversation over on LinkedIn recently discussing how may channels people actively maintain, and there were quite a few opting for broad spectrum coverage on 15 or more channels. Personally I’m usually tempted to keep the numbers down (excepting blogs/forums) simply to keep things manageable over an extended period, but I suppose you can certainly argue that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and if you have the resources and can maintain relevance in so many different places then the more the merrier!

  • http://www.sourcical.com Dan

    We are relatively new to social media And results are not yet solid but there’s no doubt that dabbling in multiple social media formats has helped us.

    If you think it’s too much just pick one or two social media sites a day to update rather than each one every day.

    Specific social media websites will come and go but the importance of social media as a whole is here to stay.

  • http://kremsa.com Daniel Kremsa

    I found this article very interesting. So, owning a popular FB poll app, I did a poll myself.

    I asked 500 FB page administrators how many social media channels they use. Interestingly enough, the data that i got was a bit different.

    Rather then trying to disagree with the article I will just state that ‘buzz’ doesn’t equal profit and it may be more profitable for smaller guys to be on a few channels that they understand well to get the most squeeze from social marketing.

    If you look over the results you will see that in our case the most successful FB users were those that use two channels. They managed the least number of pages and had highest fan average.

    This was a world wide poll targeting only users that had more then 100 fans on their page… some people re-posted the poll so that is why the others got in.

    You can find detail results here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AnGh4JFEfWmCdDZTRFRDV3hpdzlETlRMWjdZSDgycEE&hl=en&authkey=CJaXuJYM

    You can find the poll here: http://apps.facebook.com/opinionpolls/index.php?pid=1285671431

    Dan

  • http://blog.pixzr.com saad

    Certainly the buzz is created by all these channels. The tools of the marketing trade are changed. Its now in the hands of teenagers running blogs, vlogs @youtube, young hit-singers ,etc. with following of massive numbers. You have to connect to them to make the buzz. If Connan O Brian’s tweet can seel the thousands of show tickets in one night, anything is possible and without a dime. Today the world is very tricky, I just hope I get a friend with mass-following to get my small projects feel the heat of traffic.

    Tick Tock

    Saad

  • http://www.thebuilderbuzz.com/ Jeff Widmer

    We’re using seven social media networks and tools to build awareness of innovation in the building trades with The Builder Buzz at http://www.thebuilderbuzz.com/.

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