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Political actors can benefit from more from targeted social marketing than email blasts. Monitoring supporters and rewarding higher-clout followers can do well to spread a political groups message and educate voters.

While Internet users continue to use traditional digital communications like email, brands have much more valuable tools to succeed.Social media engagement tool Attentive.lygives non-profits, political campaigns and businesses the means to monitor their social buzz, identify potential brand evangelists and micro-target supporters. By learning more about their supporters, clients of this service from Fission Strategycan more effectively encourage posts and offer rewards. Such a product will be extremely topical in this presidential election year, when many types of organizations will be projecting a message and listening to the public.

Helping organizations transition from email lists to social media

Most organizations and political groups (or even businesses) still use emails as their main channel engage with supporters and citizens. Fission Strategy partner Rosalyn Lemieux tells lAtelier that organizations and administrations have resources invested in their email list and are hesitant to use it less in favor of social media. Attentive.ly serves to lower this barrier by making use of the hard earned email list to populate their new social monitoring campaign, she explains. Users of the service import email addresses, connect their social accounts and create groups for specific topics, such as activists and donors, and can then monitor and search supporter posts.

Lets them identify supporters and empower voters

Monitoring social networks can reveal not only who is posting about a client, but what their related interests are. As Lemieux explains to lAtelier, When youre focused as an organization, sometimes you miss what your supporters are focusing on. Instead of emailing a single message, Attentive.ly helps its clients connect with supporters by looking at individual profiles instead of aggregating data. This could do much for political groups that are hoping to encourage voter registration and participation. While technology has always been affecting democracy, social networks are particularly effective because people react to social pressure to register and go [vote] Lemieux argues. Attentive.ly wants to make scalable tools available that empower a market to bring about social change.

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Switching from emails to social marketing could benefit political actors

Oracle recently announced its plans to buy social marketing startup Involver soon after the acquisition of social marketing vendor Vitrue in May. This move, according to reports, is an add up to its growing collection of customer service software aimed at the social media.

Oracle is not the first company to jump on the social media bandwagon. Many of the major vendors worldwide are aspiring to take a lead in this relatively new market domain -- Social media. Today, analysis of social media traffic is an in-demand, niche area in the real-time analytics market. Research firm IDC states that demand for enterprise social software will grow strongly in the coming years, as more organizations implement the products to improve collaboration and communication primarily among employees, but also with customers.

Following the market scenario, major IT vendors have made big or small acquisition to boost up their social media arsenal around various technologies and verticals. Here are some of them --

Salesforce.com: Targets Social Enterprises

This cloud-computing giant said Monday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Canadian shared-browsing technology startup, GoInstant, that provides co-browsing and social experience for enterprise customers and consumers.

There is a tremendous potential for social enterprises to benefit from what the GoInstant has built, particularly when combined with salesforce.com's industry-leading social, mobile, and open apps and technology, Marcel LeBrun, senior vice president at Salesforce.com said in a blog post.

Microsoft: Securing Social Network

Microsoft announced its definitive agreement to acquire Yammer, a leading provider of enterprise social networks, for $1.2 billion in cash.

Launched in 2008, Yammer now reportedly has more than 5 million corporate users, including employees at 85 percent of the Fortune 500. Yammer's service will allow employees to join a secure, private social network for free and then makes it easy for companies to convert a grassroots movement into companywide strategic initiative.

IBM: Intelligence into Social Networks

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Major IT Vendors Aiming at Social Media Through New Acquisitions

Votigo's new social marketing suite includes a promotions manager from which marketers can launch photo and video contests, sweepstakes, and other promotional apps in multiple languages across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social networks. It works in both the mobile environment and the Web.

Votigo has debuted a full-fledged social marketing suite that builds around its original core functionality of social promotions.

The 6-year-old company is offering a price point that is reasonable for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as functionality that can scale to enterprise level fairly easily, Mike La Rotonda, co-CEO and founder, told CRM Buyer.

"We have extended our engagement apps and added a full conversation manager that allows you to monitor the conversation from your customers across the social channel," he said. "You can post messages out to Twitter and Facebook and can see what people are responding to."

The company is also rolling out a social CRM feature set, which in its first iteration will focus on managing social contacts.

"Longer term," La Rotonda said, "we envision that platform plugging into other CRM products such as Salesforce.com or Sugar CRM."

The suite includes a number of features. Chief among them is a promotions manager from which marketers can launch photo and video contests, sweepstakes, and other promotional apps in multiple languages across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social networks. It works in both the mobile environment and the Web.

The promotions manager touches on the full promotion cycle: from creating the apps, to sharing and publicizing them to social audiences, to moderating submissions and fan commentary.

Another feature is the conversation manager, which serves as an interface to manage two-way conversations with fans on social media.

Besides managing social contacts, the social CRM piece includes features that track engagement and influence, and target special offers and communications. There is also analytics functionality, allowing users to measure and assess campaigns across the various social media platforms -- and email as well.

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Votigo Ventures Into Full-Scale Social Marketing

Oracle Corp. has announced the acquisition of a social marketing firm. San Francisco-based Involver, founded in 2007, offers tools for developers to create advertising campaigns on social media networks such as Facebook. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"Companies are looking to harness the full potential of social media to increase brand loyalty, connect with potential customers and anticipate buyers' needs," Oracle noted.

Oracle, an enterprise software provider, has aggressively fleshed out its social media capabilities in recent months, beginning in May with a deal for Vitrue, a social media engagement service. The following month, Oracle acquired Collective Intellect, a social media analytics company.

Even though Facebook's troubled IPO in May cast some doubt over consumer social media, deals in the enterprise sector have continued at a scorching pace.

Salesforce.com snapped up social media advertising firm Buddy Media in a $689 million tie-up in June, while Microsoft acquired workplace collaboration software maker Yammer for $1.2 billion in July.

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Oracle buys social marketing firm

This article is written by a member of our expert contributor community.

Pick up any contemporary marketing book and you'd think that marketing has completed changed over the last few years. Online marketing, social marketing, conversation marketing, traditional marketing; there are so many angles, it is easy to feel like you are constantly behind the curve. So here is a back-to-basic approach that helps you focus on what you need to do to be successful.

The core of any marketing program entails only three goals lead generation, brand building, and thought leadership. You need to achieve all of these to some degree, so it is important that you understand the purpose of each marketing activity. Here is a short description of the three goals:

To make that hat trick happen, you could use any of these traditional or emerging techniques.

Event marketing:examples include exhibiting at a trade show, sponsoring a conference, or hosting a partner meeting. Although these are classic lead generation activities, I urge you to take a broader view. Think about how you can use an event to build your brand: run contests to generate fun, post infographics or give out ebooks to provide valuable information, or give away items related to your product or service. Just make sure these activities are closely associated with your brand and the image you wish to create. Hiring a magician might be good fun, but if it doesnt connect with your brand, dont do it.

I once worked at a company where the event manager hired two models to stand in our trade show booth. He brought a camera so he could take pictures of attendees with the models. We did get thousands of leads, but they were all junk. I am amazed at how many companies waste money at shows with such silly promotions. Another good idea is to secure speaking opportunities for company executives at industry events. Have them speak as experts, not as salespeople.

If they are willing to stay away from your brand, they can establish themselves as go-to people for information by sharing experiences, insightful anecdotes, or market trends. Just remember, the topic has to be related to your business. Getting hundreds of people to attend an event is worthless if the attendees cant tie the persons expertise to the companys business.

Pay-per-click advertising:examples include Google Adwords and advertising on Facebook or LinkedIn. This is a classic lead generation activity, but it can also be used to build the brand and create brand awareness. Many companies run contests or promotions using paid online advertising to get people aware of a new product or service.

Social media:examples include creating a blog, using Twitter to communicate with your ecosystem, or maintaining Facebook pages. This is one type of activity that very few companies get right. Social media channels are not usually good for lead generation. The worst abuse is sending out product messages by Twitter to followers several times a day. Its a major turnoff. Rather, these channels should be used to exhibit market expertise and highlight topics that interest your market ecosystem. Blogs are a wonderful way to tell a story in your own, unfiltered way.

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How To Score A Marketing Hat Trick