Internet marketing is accelerating at light speed, with the explosion of Facebook and other social media welcoming businesses into a virtual community of viral expansion and virtually old-fashioned relationships.

Bulletin board-style Web sites are so last millennium, and even e-mail marketing appears so last year unless it’s more honed and targeted to the recipient.

“The day when just having a Web site was good enough is no longer,” says Troy Rumfelt, president of Digital Hill Media. “You need a blog, a YouTube page, a Facebook page, a Twitter feed going out there and all funneling back to your Web site.”

To succeed, social media should involve high-level company officers thoroughly familiar with the brand, in the conversation, such as Bill Samuels Jr., son of the Maker’s Mark founder, and Barry Judge, the blogging and tweeting chief marketing officer of Best Buy.

“People can see through it if they have an intern writing their posts,” says Rumfelt, who has given talks on social media marketing to chambers of commerce in northern Indiana.

“It’s best to have the CEO take 20 minutes out of their day and write a few posts. It’s a great way to build that fan base.”

As important as the medium is, the message is still the center.

“You can’t build a strategy on a platform,” says James Burnes, of Indianapolis, who recently founded Mobiltopia, a venture of Project Brilliant, to provide digital planning for online presence.

“Who in the organization understands our corporate message, understands our language?”

The engagement includes understanding the audiences of different platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, their need for engagement and information, the opportunities to build trust and the strategy for dialogue that includes both outbound messaging and inbound conversation.

“This is all about push-and-pull conversation, not just putting an ad out there,” Burnes says.

A Facebook fan page, for example, can provide information about a company — including timely information about events and special sales — that users find on the screen without looking for it.

A recent advertising campaign by Honda drove viewers to www.facebook.com/Honda rather than the automaker’s own Web site in order to gain more fans.

“Now they’ve got hundreds of thousands of fans that are interested in their product and they can push information to them,” says Chad Pollitt, Digital Hill Media’s representative in Fort Wayne.

Smaller sites focus on specific niches or geographic areas, such as www/smallerindiana.com, which has fewer than 10,000 members and subpages for arts, energy, entertainment, green, marketing, media, opinion, politics, sports, taxes, technology and world.

“There are a lot of industries that have social media platforms,” Burnes says, from commercial office furniture to Colts fans. “Universities are considering social platforms for their alumni base.

“It depends where your customer is. The sales model for most of those places to make money is to sell advertising,” either pay-per-click like Google or display advertising.

Along with social media, Internet marketing can include e-mail campaigns, although experts say mass impersonal blasts from giant stores with “Coupon Inside” are likely to miss some customers.

“There’s an arrogance out there for established brands, and they’re playing a numbers game, assuming someone will click,” Pollitt says. “You need to treat every e-mail address you have as a relationship.

“Then you can segment your e-mail marketing campaign to be more specific to that person. You have to provide value to people in their lives.”

Between the Buns uses e-mail, Twitter and Facebook to give friends the flavor of the restaurant
By GENE STOWE
Tribune Correspondent

Eight years ago, Between the Buns started working to improve a weak Web site and boost online marketing with e-mails that CIO and marketing director Dave Pestrak managed by hand.

Today, the restaurant chain has more than 9,000 people on its e-mail list, 3,000 fans on Facebook and 170 followers on Twitter who enjoy a taste of the eatery’s character in Pestrak’s regular posts and tweets.

The online presence extends Between the Buns’ special events, food and drink specials and other promotions to friends of friends of friends on a two-way street where Pestrak can enjoy compliments and respond to concerns.

“You want that interactivity,” he says, scrolling through a list of good wishes on the restaurant’s 25th anniversary last month. “We have had people who wrote negative things on here. It gives us the ability to respond.

“There is a huge (number) of blogging-type Web sites where people can give restaurant reviews. If I give them a forum to do it, I can deal with it.”

Between the Buns started investing more in the online presence in 2003, when the chain hired Bluehornet.com to manage the e-mail functions, including list maintenance.

A link on the Facebook page allows visitors to sign up for an every-other-week newsletter, identifying segments that are interested in food and drinks specials, sports, special events for adults and kids’ events. They also can recommend their friends and provide e-mails.

“You want the viral aspects,” Pestrak says. “You want friends to refer friends. That’s the whole key to social marketing. It’s what it’s all about.”

About 18 months ago, he created a Between the Buns fan page on his Facebook account. About a year ago, he opened a Twitter account. All carry the flavor of Between the Buns.

“When writing the newsletter and when writing the Facebook and Twitter, I try to inject personality,” Pestrak says, such as joking “I know where my bonus went” when announcing $2,500 in food and drink giveaways during the anniversary.

“You try to put a personal touch in there so they get to know people instead of just a business. We try and have personality at the tables, with the servers – not just ‘Here we are. Come eat. Give me money.’ I try to continue that through our e-mails, our Facebook, our Twitter.

“It has to be social. That has to reflect everywhere here. People didn’t become fans to get commercials.”

The Facebook page includes a gift-giving application where people can send food and drink to their friends. (Facebook blocks pages of users under 21 from receiving alcohol.)

“In my opinion, Twitter is not as popular in the Midwest,” Pestrak says. “It’s an East Coast-West thing. It’s still picking up speed in the Midwest.”

He times the Facebook and Twitter activity to catch people online as they’re getting hungry. Even if they don’t read the alert, it might appear on the computer screen with the Between the Buns logo, keeping top-of-mind awareness for the brand.

“I try and do it at 11 o’clock in the morning, 4 or 5 in the evening,” Pestrak says. “I try to hit people as they’re thinking about lunch or dinner.”

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