Content + ( The most important part of a social media marketing campaign )

The most important component to a social media marketing campaign in one word is CONTENT. Thats it. Simple right? Well unfortunatley its not that simple...i really wish it was as my job would be so much easier. In trying to explain why content is so important I found myself always repeating the same mantra. "Its content plus measurement, its content + portablility, its content + strategy its content + analytics. You get the picture. So I have started calling this my Content + strategy for social media. And it seems to resonate with my audience.

It never ceases to amaze me how many meetings I end up in where the discussion is based around "driving users" to a "campaign landing environment" - but the question of if that CLE actually has compelling, relevent content once you have driven your audience there more often than not somehow gets overlooked. Another scenario I often find myself in is when both agency and client folks alike suggest "lets do something viral"! Virals can be wildly successful. They do more often than not put the "content first" model to play. However virals act like hit models...and more often they miss than hit. This is due to a variety of reasons but one of the main ones is the lack of prioritzation around sharing and portability. Make it easy for people to pass a long your content. Share with friends. upload to their blog, comment on it, digg it...you get where I am going here. It is becoming more and more feasible to measure this "pass a long" effect and for me this is where my job gets really exciting. Finally we can start to look at the effect of not just what search and display can have on a campaign but what the "sharing of content" has had on driving awareness or even end actions like a download, a registration and even a purchase. A company that is making great leaps and bounds in this area is Reach Machines....check them out if you can. As always i will leave this post with a question...does anyone know of any other companies - apart from the obvious ad serving tech companies - that are really making progress in the measurement of portable content and the "pass a long" effect on marketing campaigns?