Today we are delighted to interview Lon Safko, author of "The Social Media Bible" and "The Fusion Marketing Bible". Lon is a professional speaker, and coach for large companies to help them harness innovative thinking and social media techniques. Lon is also the host of the PBS Television Special "Social Media & You... Communicating In A Digital World". His achievements have led him to become one of the most admired industry experts in the digital world today. This is the is the first half of the interview with Lon.

 

Question (Q): What is the best start point for people interested in a career in marketing and social media?

Lon: Learn all marketing techniques!  Understanding only social media is understanding only half of the tools you will need to thoroughly understand marketing.  Marketing isn’t either or, it's both traditional and social.  It’s also digital…  Don’t know the difference?  SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SEM (Search Engine Marketing), RSS (Simple Syndication), ecommerce, remarketing, pixel marketing, hyper-targeted contextual marketing, geo-fenced or geo-targeted marketing, mobile marketing, and a lot more, are all forms of marketing, but aren’t traditional or social, but are often more important than social marketing.  To start, they need to understand marketing in the broadest sense and at the deepest level or they have no marketing value.

 

Q: How do you use technology in marketing and social media?

Lon: Intensely!  Every way you can!  Every demographic (age, sex, geographic location) all prefer to communication differently.  The 40-60 age group uses email, the Tweens use Snapchat, the fifty-something female likes Facebook.  Some communicate during work hours using their desktops, students might use laptops, but EVERYONE is using mobile!  You can check out for more information on generational differences here.

You also need to understand analytics.  You need to be able to read a sever report, run a Hootsuite report, understand Salesforce “River of News”.  This is all part of today’s marketing.

 

Q: In an ever fast-paced world, what would your advice to marketing professionals to keep up to date with digital marketing trends and tools?

Yikes!  You must immerse yourself!  You must live it!  You must personally do EVERYTHING!  Not just what you like.  This isn’t about you.  It’s about what every customer and prospect likes.  And YOU must do it.  Have you set up a Facebook ad campaign using hyper-targeted contextual advertising?  Are you monitoring the keywords every day?  Are you A/B testing everything from your email subject lines to your Facebook posts, to your tweets?  You need to create, launch, manage, and analyze an advertising campaign on every network to see how it works and why it fails.  You need to get out of your office or classroom and go to meetings, hear presentations, go to conferences, visit tradeshows and listen to the speakers.  You must read a lot of news to see what’s trending, what’s working, what’s not, and what clever ideas others are using in our industry.  You must devour lot of blogs, videos, and eBooks.  There was a 1986 movie called Short Circuit, whit Steve Guttenberg and a robot named Johnny-5 who voraciously consumed data.

 

Q: What are the most important skills that marketing professionals and managers must have today?

Lon: A thorough understanding of marketing, not just one piece of it.  As if this wasn’t difficult enough, you must be innovative!  Creative!  Anyone can use the same tools as the next marketer.  Knowing all these tools won’t make you successful.  I can show you how to use a paintbrush, but you will never paint the Mona Lisa.  You need to see what’s working and create innovative approaches to everything you do.  Actually, this is the most difficult part.  Anyone can learn the tools, but not everyone can learn to be innovative.

 

Q: Do you normally see marketing professionals struggling to achieve their goals? If so, what would you advise them to improve?

Lon: Yes, all the time.  Marketing professional are struggling worldwide.  They don’t know what to do to get their product or service above all the noise.  This week, 200,000 blogs will be posted on LinkedIn.  Last year, 700,000 eBooks were published on Amazon.  Five billion videos are watched on YouTube every day!  How can you compete with this?  How can you differentiate yourself from the million or billions of others?  It’s become nearly impossible.

Also, marketing people refuse to measure.  This is a throwback to when traditional media was all there was.  And, as we all know, traditional marketing was difficult to measure; not impossible.  Today, EVERYTHING is measurable, even traditional media.  The other problem with marketers is they don’t WANT to measure.  Measuring results is the best way to get fired or not having your contract renewed.  So, they don’t.  They just tell their boss or client that if they didn’t get the results they expected, they need to throw more money at it and do it again.  Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results.  But, that’s what we do as marketers, what’s comfortable to us.  You can’t manage what you don’t measure!

By Laura Herrero Gonzalez

 

Excited about keep on learning with Lon!? The second part of the interview coming soon! In the meanwhile, check out more topics on DueDigital.com. and don't forget to sign up to keep updated with the latest industry trends.

 

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