Image Credit: Twentieth Century Fox Corporation

Avatar has been a runaway blockbuster hit of the holiday movie season. Of course it is a film with spectacular visual effects, amazing new technologies and an original story, but we marketers also find it notable for its smart use of social media.

Avatar isn’t the first film to promote itself on Twitter, Facebook or MySpace—far from it. Every movie these days has its own Web site with rich video, Twitter handle, MySpace presence and more. What Avatar did that was unique was use these platforms in ways BETTER than anyone else has and APPLY LEARNINGS from other films.

For example, nearly all films run trailers online—it helps to drive traffic to the site and introduce the content to a broader audience. Avatar, however, did this twice as well: Not only did it roll out three different trailers (including one interactive one), but when fans re-mixed one of its trailers and mashed it up with other movies, the movie house stood by and let the fans have at it. It trusted its fans with the brand and permitted passion to spread and grow.

While service firm sites will never see the kind of adulation and interaction as a movie or consumer brand site, lessons abound for professional services firm CMOs and their events, thought leadership efforts and other promotional efforts:

1. Use your digital presences in concert with one another. Each site/page/link should fit into the larger constellation of the Web presence you currently manage, and you should have a clear strategy for how they play off one another.
2. Even if you are not the first to market in using social media, the opportunity to use it better than anyone else still exists. Professional services firms lag sorely behind in social media use, never mind using it for differentiation. That’s an opportunity.
3. Web 2.0 by definition encourages interaction with your brand. Embrace it. Monitor it, but jump in. Allow—nay, encourage—your employees, clients and prospects to interact with you in the online space, be it through reviews (both good and bad), citations, links, etc. The conversation will happen anyway—you may as well be a part of it.

Nothing could be more topical for professional services marketers than social networking. We’re all atwitter about the possibilities. After all, the delivery of professional services is built on relationships and that’s the promise of Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.  While the jury is out on the effectiveness of these tools, particularly the ROI, none of us is willing simply to sit on the beach while the Next Big Wave washes over us. So, let’s jump and explain to your folks why you have carpal thumb syndrome.

Understand the basics

Businesses can no longer ignore the growing network of people communicating online and through blogging specifically. The number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002 is roughly 133 million, with over 346 million people globally reading these blogs. That’s a lot of people! The challenge is to create a blog where people will visit—and return.

Set your strategy and define your goals

The culture of blogging is all about being real—real people sharing real experiences and insights. Often, novice bloggers confuse their business blog with advertising or PR efforts. They try to use their blog as a forum for self-promotion instead of delivering value to their readers. Yes, blogging can align with marketing, but don’t let it be your main goal. Readers ignore blatant advertising tactics. If you try to scam them as Sony once did, you’ll get trashed online. The truth will come out. Therefore, it’s important to identify the goals of your blog from the beginning and layout a strategic plan.

Some common goals:

• Gain industry exposure
• Build brand awareness
• Connect with existing customers
• Deliver value through relevant content
• Be seen in the industry as a thought leader
• Build communities of supporters
• Drive traffic
• Increase new business.

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Last month we learned how to build a community of viewers, reviewed the four legs of a Web site plus shared thoughts on how to deliver the brand, not just data. This month we want to tell the other half of the story: The new model for developing successful Web sites is getting clearer as the years pass. Here are some thoughts to consider:

You Are No Longer In Charge

Users are. Web 1.0 was about servicing the brand (“Hello out there, here we are, we do this, isn’t it great?”) Today, a clean, well-lit place is the price of entry. In the world of Web 2.0, marketers extend the collaborative brand (customer and company). That means you are no longer (and never were) in complete control of the whole brand. You can only deliver perspectives on the brand. Users complete the picture.

Here’s how Razorfish describes the old model: the customer was a tiny moon orbiting the giant brand, a cathedral of graphic standards. Today’s brand is more like a paint blob with users participating as co-painters of the brand. This is a seismic shift in our understanding of “brand.” Now customers and sellers “talk” back and forth about what the brand is and what the brand should be.

I hope you’re reading this carefully. Humor me and go back and read these last paragraphs again.

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