What Twitter Teaches That You Already Know

The Twitter buzz is still building. Clearly an excellent channel for affiliate and web marketing, Twitter is now a major marketing channel for more traditional companies and brands.

In fact, some of the most well-known brands are slated to present their strategies and success stories with social media at the upcoming BlogWell event. McDonald's, Ford, General Mills and other major corporations will share what has worked with Twitter, Facebook, del.icio.us, blogs and other on-line social platforms.

My prediction is that the ultimate conclusion of all of the presentations will be quite obvious. In fact, they will conclude what we already know. All of these major brands with their huge marketing budgets will state that they only way to succeed in these marketing channels is to provide value.

Sure there will be some cool presentations about good campaigns and how to drive traffic. But behind successful campaigns will be the underlying foundation of providing value. Value, love and buzz is the way to create brand awareness, regardless of the medium.

Andy Sernovitz is a marketing expert who focuses on word-of-mouth marketing. He touts that companies and brands must send out love into the social media atmosphere. Love, he says, will create brand advocates. Brand advocates, in turn, spread the word. Spread the word, build a fan base and the money follows.

This is the same "give to get" concept from Dale Carnegie in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People (which was first published in...wait for it...1936).

So don't get lost in the buzz behind the social media wave. And don't get overwhelmed. Just apply the value add principle that should be the basis of your Marketing DNA.

Lastly, don't be afraid. There is a lot to leverage with social media. But if you choose early on that your strategy is to give value and send out love, you are sure to gain followers and drive business.

After all, the media may be new but the message shouldn't change: it's all about value. But you already knew that.