In case you skipped biology in high school (or blanked it out deliberately, like me), evergreen refers to trees which keep their leaves year round, while deciduous refers to those that lose them seasonally.
What the hell does that have to do with social media marketing? I’m glad you asked, obviously.
Evergreen vs. deciduous is a handy way to look at two major flavors of social media marketing in practice, flavors which often get lumped together under a generic umbrella. They do however have important differences which both agencies and clients should keep in mind.
Evergreen Social Media
In a sense this is the “old school” definition of social media, the stuff written about in so many books, articles, and case studies. Evergreen social media marketing is never-ending, the foundational efforts you absolutely need to embrace in today’s world. They form the backbone of your core strategic communications, public relations, branding, and customer service efforts.
In practice evergreen social media efforts are:
- Reputation monitoring and measurement tools and programs.
- Listening programs, tracking selected hot keywords, influencers, or sources..
- Brand-level presences on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and so on.
- Support efforts – think of the oft-referenced @comcastcares, Dell, or Zappos case studies.
- “Engaging in the conversation” to drive thought leadership, handle crises, or just build relationships with your communities.
It’s the stuff you should be doing all the time – establishing a presence in key channels and conversations, paying attention, responding and engaging. Evergreen social media efforts are absolutely critical come crisis time, and lack of them are the stuff for so many of the social media horror stories you’ll find floating around. As a result you’ll find these efforts heavily pushed by PR and communications agencies, along with speciality monitoring and engagement shops, and often are driven on the client-side by PR, brand, and support groups.
Deciduous Social Media
On the flip side, some social media marketing efforts are tied more directly to outbound, short-lived marketing and advertising campaigns. They extend the campaign creative, messaging, or calls-to-action out through social media channels to drive traffic and buzz. Smart efforts piggyback on the evergreen foundation described above, to leverage monitoring, measurement, and engagement efforts already in place. And, like the campaigns they are funded by, they expire after a while. The leaves eventually fall off these guys, so to speak.
In practice, these efforts include:
- User generated content campaigns, often tied to a contest (create a video, win a car; submit a photo, win a trip; etc.).
- Anything and everything the marketer is hoping will go “viral” – YouTube videos tied to a product launch or supporting creative currently airing in :30 second TV spots, for example.
- Audience participation (fan favorite voting, for example) contests and promotions.
- Blogger outreach in direct support of a new site or product launch.
Deciduous efforts are by definition short-lived, seasonal, campaign-driven examples of social media marketing. On the agency side they – mostly – live in the land of advertising and digital marketing shops, while on the client side they are driven out of the product marketing teams and ad groups. Deciduous efforts live and die by the metrics of the campaign – conversions, clicks, responses, registrations, sales, and so on.
Why does that all matter?
As you consider who should “own” social media marketing within your company – or what kind of agency you should tap for help – step back and consider what kind of social media marketing you’re really aiming to implement. While they may share much of the same oft-confusing lingo, evergreen and deciduous efforts call upon very distinct skills and competencies and drive for very different results. Know what you’re to accomplish first, in order to select the right flavor of social media marketing.
Photo via Wikipedia.
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