In March 2010 we had the opportunity to host an International speaker at Social Media Monday, we was delighted to have Chris Tompkins joining us to present at the March event, so we thought it would be a great idea to interview him in the lead up to the his 4500 mile flight from Florida to London.

-Can you tell us a little about your background, before Social Media?
Well, my background is steeped in international marketing – about 11 years worth give or take. From a young age I became intrigued with culture, how people communicate and, of course the media. This saw me travel and study in China, South Africa and throughout Europe. My studies led me to my passion for branding, graphic design, relationship building, networking, public relations and definitely online promotion.

After I finished my schooling, I began working professionally in various sides of the UK music industry (publishing, record labels, education), based in London. When I decided to relocate to the USA, I went into public relations where I had that “aha moment” where I discovered the perfect blend of traditional marketing, public relations and online marketing that made social media marketing finally “pop” for me. And here we are!

-How did you get into Social Media?
It actually started back in my days at the music university when I was trying to find fresh and effective ways of targeting the potential student market. Regularly I was using the old standby at the time, myspace.com, and then Facebook and Linkedin. From there I began to uncover what the social media was truly all about. The more I researched and learned, I learned many ways that a business can market its services/products using the different social media platforms.

Also, I discovered the human side of the social media realm which was something that was always challenging to incorporate into a traditional marketing initiative. It was the first time I found a type of marketing that shared my views and ethos of how to build and market. The result was that I dove deeper and deeper, developed my own range of customized service packages, began working freelance clients, then professional clients through my firm…and off I went!

-How long have you been running Go! Media and what’s your focus?
I have been involved with social media on various levels for about 6 years and launched Go! Media International, LLC nearly a year ago. The focus of my firm is “aggressively holistic” social media marketing campaigns, blogging, consulting and training. As an entrepreneur I love it and feel extremely lucky that I am able to do something for a living that brings me so much happiness! Launching the firm was the best decision I ever made, and everyday its exciting to engage with new people all over the world, help them grow their businesses and learn something new – all in one go!

-What advice can you give to businesses that are looking to enter Social Media?
I think the first thing is to pin point what the goal of launching a social media marketing campaign is. Many people come to me thinking social media marketing will be the saviour of their sagging marketing campaign. While social media marketing is a core component of a dynamic, fully comprehensive marketing plan….it is not the be all and end all of your marketing strategy.

Aside from that, the other piece of advice I would give is to listen and plan before you dive in. Many dive in directly without a well conceived strategy, an understanding of the social media communication patterns and execute a strategy of “talking” instead of listening and interacting. This sort of activity will likely produce little to no real “results” for the company.

-How do you decide what Social Media outlets / tools to offer to a particular client?
I look at their goals, target markets, what they are trying to promote and what sort of content they regularly produce. So for example if it is a B2B company that offers a business coaching service to human resource professionals and do bi-weekly Vlogs, I would suggest a campaign with a strong focus on YouTube, Vimeo and LinkedIn.

As a rule, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter work for a wide array of clients, but others can benefit from a slightly altered approach. Understanding this, when developing a campaign for a client we have to customize many of the elements. At the end of the day, in social media marketing there is not a “one-size fits all” approach. The reason? Human beings are all different, with nuances which must be suited to the personality and voice of the client.

-You are quite active on Twitter, what does it represent for you?
What does Twitter represent for me? Candidly it represents the rampant disease of increasingly short attention spans (which I can be guilty of). But from a business perspective it does give you a great way to announce, share, engage, entertain and inform your target audience. Is it my favourite? Not by a long shot, but it does work for marketing purposes. WIth that said, due to the results that can be gained, Twitter has a firm place in my firm’s social media marketing campaigns.

-What Social Media case study do you think has been top notch?
Actually, Marketing Sherpa published a study over a year ago that illustrated how companies (large and small) were changing their marketing focus to include more social media marketing. The study showed all of the different marketing spends of the average company and the percentage change year on year. What was interesting was that it presented a staggering view of how across the board the amount of money spent on each marketing activity was being reduced. Not a shocker of course with the economy so tumultuous, but while those amounts were being reduced the amount spent on social media marketing was drastically increasing.

In essence, this is the right thing to do. You never want to completely severe a successful marketing action, but reducing an unsuccessful action and allocating the money to a new initiative is pretty smart.

-What do you think is the biggest thing that marketers fail to realize about social media?
A couple of things. First that it is not direct response advertising. This is a “social” market and not a launch pad for endless spam. Another aspect that can be overlooked is whatever you say reflects on your character (personal and professional). So calling someone an “jerk” in a Linkedin discussion can come back to bite you on your own professional behind one day.

-What Social Media innovation would you like to see in 2010?
Not necessarily a innovation, but rather added security measure. I would like to see more discretion used in the promoting of Facebook applications. Ideally it would be excellent for you to have to “opt-in” to receiving individual applications, as and when they come up. Now, I’m not knocking these Facebook applications in the least. While they can be fun and sometimes useful, logging in to find your profile littered with useless garbage is irritating. In the past week alone, I have removed at least 6 highly offensive ones from my profile alone.

-And what do you think we’ll be talking about as the newest social media trend one year from now?
Good question. In the industry as a whole, I think there will be a distinct shift in organizations to begin developing in-house social media marketing teams and departments. Also, many public relations firms will begin to offer the service as a part of their stable of activity.
In terms of new “tools” or “sites” the sky is the limit. My overriding feeling is that video will finally begin to come into its own and become even easier to use, which will directly affect its use. For years people have said “video will be the next big thing” and I think this time we will actually see it happen.

-Token Question, Google Wave? Where do you see it going?
My knee jerk reaction is I see it going nowhere fast. With all the bugs, sluggish speed and negative feedback, the brains at Google have quite a bit of work to do on this one yet. My thought is that Google wanted to throw their hat in the ring of social networking and released something way before it was ready and are going to build something new around the feedback from the users. Smart? Perhaps, I’m still open to the idea.

Thanks to Chris for taking the time to talk to use today, We’re looking forward to hearing more that the March Social Media Monday event.

Connect with Chris Tompkins:

Blog: http://www.chrisgomedia.com
Website: http://www.gomediaonline.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/chrisgomedia
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisgomedia