Social Media Wave- Social Media Marketing Agency

We have been working alot on our AirGate projects over the last couple of months. One of the key initiatives of our project is to implement an easy to use Location Based Marketing platform that connects communities (or clusters of passengers). We have researched the topic and related platforms in some detail.

The basic issue at hand is that you:

• need to have a top level community that you can own and control
• be able to connect to other social nets and tools
• gather and own your own data
• develop meaningful insights that provide strategic advantage
• deliver campaigns / offers without borders to achieve KPI's such as market penetration or new revenue drivers.

When you weigh out existing commercial platforms like Foursquare, you quickly see the deck stack against using them as a single bet. Creating a branded community isn't a new phenomenon as we have seen Social Networking Community software proliferate from about 6 original startups back in 2007/2008 to over 120 at last count by Forrester last Fall.

Looking back a few years, we worked with a client to build a cool hybrid of managed content in a magazine format. The content was then re-branded for a channel of customers who in turn got to add some specific ad banners and services offers to their end patrons. The strategy was pretty simple but effective.The magazine platform was built back in early 2002 when a fledgling start up painstakingly sourced private investment capital to build a Content Management System from scratch and the company quickly burned through hundreds of thousands of dollars in development time and marketing expense.

One of the challenges was making the content take on some mobility, so we helped then create an e mail based push system that allowed subscribers to actually receive the magazine with a custom html page and logo for each client. This was well received and our client made a good living at it for a long time.

So the idea of using a custom magazine was out of reach for many marketers due to the high costs of developing the software and paying for valuable content creation. Flip ahead to today's landscape of low cost platforms and many sources of content. I mentioned how to use low cost CMS's in a previous post so let's look at how to use content to create value in a marketing play.

If you were a retailer of some sort of consumer goods, you could create a social media enabled magazine which showcased products, applications, emotional stories based on some A to B scenario, new options, new pricing or configurations etc. The content is free and plentiful and there are no issues using the content if you are a sales partner. They constantly update you with e mails, blogs and likely sales information in the form of videos, images etc. These sources of information can be reused or re-purposed by you very easily to create a living magazine on auto pilot.

Unlike the companies still living in the 90's which create and distribute expensive marketing materials in html based newsletter templates or worse yet-.pdf document attachments, you can create live feeds from your suppliers to update your magazine as they send out the information. Your magazine can show various twitter feeds, Facebook widgets, RSS feeds with articles, images and even videos on your aggregated Video page.

It's no secret that going beyond the push messaging of traditional marketing is a much needed shift in how we treat our clients. In fact, giving a voice to your customers is one of the best olive branches we have at our disposal as social media marketers.

The trouble is, most of the web sites we have are nothing more than static brochure sites. Many have added links and hidden directories to cobble together some "Social Interface" by perhaps linking to those ubiquitous Social Networks or added a /wordpress.com feature to host your blogs.

I am truly excited to be announcing a new Joint Venture called SimpliFlying Airports with our AirGate Solutions team (I am a partner) with SimpliFlying pte based in Singapore. After more than a year of mashing up notes, ideas and concepts my partner Robert Cook and I began our go to market strategy for bringing Social Media methods and best practices (yes there are some of each!) to Airlines and Airports. Robert is a senior consultant to both sectors of the aviation business and has been an industry leader in developing strategies for increasing both operations and retail efficiencies.

We have been working on blueprints for the use of Social Media strategies, developing meaningful aviation market based objectives and metrics, developing passenger technology architectures and more. We met with Shashank Nigam of SimpliFlying pte (Global leader in Airline Branding and Social Media use) several months ago to compare thoughts on the market, the opportunities and the synergies we shared collectively. So in short, we were in immediate awe of what we all felt was a partnership which had to become very real very quickly.

In the iterim, we have been heads down creating our Joint Venture which also marks the opening of a new office in the Greater Toronto Area, located in downtown Toronto. This new office will compliment existing offices in New York and Singapore.

A lot goes on behind the scenes in developing a plan to target a particular sector, so just understanding Social Media applications from our perspective would not get us anywhere near the marketplace. For the last 2 years, we have worked closely with developers, industry analysts, thought leaders and taken a hands on approach with applied Social Media and Web 2.0 platforms and technologies. We met with several pioneers in "New Media" from the advertising world who get branded entertainment for retail and we partnered with the best out there.

Following business trends is a collateral activity that also must track with the crystal ball gazing within Social Media. What are Social CRM impacts and measures? What will loyalty programs look like in a year? What real pivotal changes are possible today? Who are the sector leaders in other verticals such as automotive?

Creating a small crack in a large market is very strategic- that light that bleeds through better be laser light -with the power to disrupt the status quo on the other side.

That is what SimpliFlying Airports is doing-officially as of today.

Look for more information about what we are doing at SimpliFlying Airports and follow us at @simpliflyingAP on Twitter