social media

Steven Woods on social media, marketing automation and lead management

Steven Woods Recently I asked Steven Woods, CTO at leading B2B marketing automation software provider Eloqua to share his thoughts about social media for another blog. Steven explained how he sees the role of social media in marketing automation and lead management.

I thought it was worth posting here too. This is what Steven wrote.

Marketers today are learning about a barrage of new concepts and techniques. Social media is clearly a topic that cannot be ignored, as messages are spread through ever-larger social networks with increasing speed.  Marketing automation is being adopted at rapid pace, altering the way that marketers are able to define and deploy campaigns. 

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Social media are not push media

Yes, there are tools to increase your number of Twitter followers. Yes, there are companies that will populate your Facebook fan page or will improve your LinkedIn activities. Some of these tools and services are fully automated. Some are purely a matter of outsourcing.

On Twitter, it’s perfectly possible to automatically follow people based on the content of their tweets. And your follower count will rapidly grow that way. However, it’s not about quantity, people.

There certainly are legitimate businesses that will build a community for you, content production included. Everyone does what he wants but the distinction between authenticity – a crucial element of social media marketing – and getting volume for the sake of volume sometimes gets really narrow.

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