Social Media Marketing Interviews - Carrie Scully - Public Relations

Carrie Scully is a social media manager at a PR firm in Cleveland and runs social media for a number of corporate accounts.

MZ: Describe what projects/organizations/activities you have marketed using social networking?
Carrie Scully: My clients include: a leading global truck manufacturer, a number of local Cleveland restaurants and bars and a national consumer products corporation.

MZ: What social media sites have you used for marketing?
Carrie Scully: I have used LinkedIn, Facebook, Foursquare, Quora, YouTube, Google+, Twitter, Ustream, flickr, Yelp, Ning, MeetUp, and blogs

MZ: What aspect(s) of your social media marketing has/have been most effective?
Carrie Scully: Most effective for items are what I would describe as information that organically comes from us: contests, landing pages, photo albums, polls and feedback.

MZ: What aspect(s) of your social media marketing has/have been least effective?
Carrie Scully: For the major truck manufacturer, because it has three globally recognized brands that are highly technical in nature, customer service has been a bit of a challenge, but we are working on polishing that process off.

MZ: What is the most important thing social media marketing provides that traditional marketing doesn’t?
Carrie Scully: It provides a direct two way(or group) conversation with the ability to share information. Traditional marketing is a one way channel.

MZ: Have you experienced any drawbacks using social media for marketing?
Carrie Scully: Social Media is an open forum that allows for open conversation, in which negative comments and such can go viral. While I have never experienced this snowball effect, I do keep an eye out for it. Also, monitoring external mentions of big brands is a huge undertaking.

MZ: How do you measure the effectiveness of your social media marketing efforts?
Carrie Scully: By reviewing both inbound analytics and feedback directly related to the outbound messages and outside mentions of the brands untied to the profiles or messages themselves.

MZ: What is the one most important quality necessary for a successful social media marketing plan?
Carrie Scully: Content is king - but it has to be brief. It must be interactive and timely. Multimedia can be valuable. Content calendar that is at least 2-3 months out.


MZ: What is the one most critical thing to avoid when using social media marketing?
Carrie Scully: Social Media Marketing must be interactive and timely to be effective. One cannot allow an organization's Social Media to be not interactive or not timely.

MZ: Do you have any other advice for an individual or organization attempting to use social media marketing?:
Carrie Scully: Use management platforms such as HootSuite. Use landing page applications such as Pagemodo and Wildfire. Use SocialMentions.com for external monitoring purposes (free service) or Radian6(pay for service). Be transparent, timely, proactive and helpful. Final note: Engage. Engage. Engage.