Business and brands have realized that they need to do social and do it well. So they create a social media marketing strategy and then they start implementing the tactics to achieve the goals.

It all looks rosy at the start, everyone is excited. The staff are singing Kumbaya, the angels are dancing and everyone can’t wait to play with the shiny social media toys. Social media is the new savior.

Then the reality sets in.

It takes a lot of resources. That means time, money and people. It needs creativity and inspiration. It requires a long term commitment.

Succeeding with social media is not a get rich quick scheme. Creating quality content takes skill, experience and expertise. Building tribes, followers and fans takes focused attention and engagement.

Obtaining 10,000 Twitter followers or 20,000 Facebook likes requires serious investment.

How do you glue it together?

All these social networks have popped up and are screaming for attention.

Social media marketing requires some of these key activities and doing it well.

• Designing and developing the social platforms such as blogs and branded social network accounts
• Optimizing those social networks and digital assets
• Constant content creation, curating and sourcing
• Updating multiple networks daily with fresh content
• Monitoring and managing the engagement on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Google+….and we are only just starting!!. There is also Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.

There was never a grand plan. Social networks are a global social and connected consciousness powered by technology that is evolving before our eyes.

It’s fun, it’s crazy and it’s chaos.

Marketing used to be easy..sort of!!

It was one channel. Television or radio. Magazine or newspapers. Direct mail or telemarketing

You planned and set up your marketing campaigns for the year. They started and finished. You moved onto the next one. That was it. They worked or didn’t work.

Social media marketing is a consistent and continual treadmill. Creating content needs to be done every day. It then needs to be published. Then monitoring the engagement and responding to Facebook comments and Twitter streams needs to be attended to. Making sure that the person responsible for responding to social platform feedback does it with the right tone and voice is never ending. Often outsourcing it or asking the intern to take it on is not just going to cut it.

The reality is that marketing is moving from “campaign marketing” to “continuous marketing“.

Marketing has now become a big daily commitment.

That is a problem. because you need the technology and tools to do it at scale.

The Problem: Social at Scale

In 2013 you will see the maturing of technology that will make it easier to to do social at scale. Currently there are tools that do monitoring. Other technologies do custom tab Facebook apps well. Some platforms are better for Twitter monitoring, management and publishing.

In the main the tools are separate and disconnected.

Some have been free and have been built on the freemium model. Basic features for free and the more complex functionality commands a monthly or annual subscription.

So what will a perfect social media at scale technology start to look like?

• It will have one repository and database for all the content, including video
• It will plug seamlessly into cloud based video serving platforms such as Wistia, Amazon or Brightcove that provide reliable and fast delivery of online video content
• It will enable you to post multi-media content from one dashboard to multiple social networks
• It will have inbuilt templates so that landing pages on websites and blogs can be set up easily and quickly
• It will provide  tools that allow you to do custom Facebook tabs
• It will integrate into existing CRM and ERP systems.
• It will interface to other marketing channels such as email
• It will allow you to optimize platforms and content for search engines
• It will cater for paid social media advertising and organic social media marketing
• It will allow multiple user access and editing controls for teams to manage social at scale

Larger businesses and organisations will be able to either develop this capability in house or be able to pay for these tools and technologies that are being developed by Enterprise class software companies.

What will you see in the future?

So expect to see in 2013 and over the next 2-3 years technology platforms that will make it easier for the chief marketing officer and social media mangers to create, publish, promote and manage a continual social media marketing commitment.

The big end of town will get it first but also expect to see the small to medium enterprises receive the benefit of this technology over time that is affordable and efficient.

Want to Learn More About How to Create Compelling Content that Your Audience Wants to Read, View and Share?

My book – Blogging the Smart Way “How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” – will show you how.

It is now available to download. I show you how to create and build a blog that rocks and grow tribes, fans and followers on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It also includes dozens of tips to create contagious content that begs to be shared and tempts people to link to your website and blog.

I also reveal the tactics I used to grow my Twitter followers to over 120,000.