I was speaking with a person that I serve on a non-profit board with. Their comment was that Facebook was losing steam. I am not sure I am seeing that. Every PR trade publication, keeps mentioning social media and how important it is to the marketing mix. I am sure for new users the excitement wears off. But ultimately, this is a tool that will be used for the forseeable future.

As our agency has been study Google Wave, we have been trying to understand how that might fit it into the marketing mix. We have been optimizing press releases since 2004 and we have been telling clients that the internet is a media outlet that entire time.

Back in Q4 of 2008 we had a client mention that they wanted to pull back their marketing efforts because of the economy. Through that discussion we had mentioned that we could cut back on a few items, but we need to redesign the website. The site was 7 years old and was not generating any leads. The new site launched in February and today the client is telling us that they can barely keep up with the leads.  Along with the site we incorporated a blog, SEM parameters, PPC & started a Facebook fan page.

What we are seeing is traditional marketing, pr and advertising is feeding dialogue into the social networks.

Another client – we launched a new website in April 2009, the traffic has basically increased 250% every month – with a few simple tactics, some traditional PR in industry trade publications, Twitter & Facebook – along with Google searches.

Ultimately – marketing is a long term program – not a short term sprint. We see social media being a marathon, not a sprint.