Social Media may be coming of age as a reliable and cost effective addition to a marketing program.  The factors that are leading more and more companies to add social media to the marketing mix include:

• More email marketing is landing into spam folders decreasing the ROI for these programs

• PPC campaigns are becoming more expensive with ad service consolidations and increased bidding activity

• Television viewing is decreasing as it moves online and commercial skipping is rampant with DVR, TIVO and other technologies meaning that less eyes see your messages

• Print continues to decline in effectiveness, including newspapers and trade journals, as news is served up via RSS feeds from blogs and online news outlets

Social media is an effective alternative to the above factors:

• Gets around spam for sending out messages and can be far more interactive than email blasts

• Boosts organic SEO which can lead to lesser dependency on PPC

• Can incorporate video and is one of the two leading outlets of leisure time that is being directed away from television (The other is gaming)

• Incorporates the alternative channels of PR such as blogs to feed messages

Social media is not a magic pill to increasing ROI for your marketing programs.  It takes time and a comfort level with the mediums.  However, beginning to incorporate social media into your marketing can pay dividends as you adapt to the declines being seen by other marketing tools.