In an interview with Abby Johnson, Fox started by defining a few terms.  Earned media is “when someone says something about you, rather than you saying it yourself.”  Paid media is then “when you pay to place your content on a third-party channel,” while owned media is “your own channel.”

Next, Fox stressed that it’s important to combine these media types when marketing something, since this approach carries the content to a much wider audience.  Using multiple channels – like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube, for example – is important, too.

Worried about the expense or lack of other companies in the field?  Don’t.  Fox has seen paid social efforts achieve a clickthrough rate of 0.55 percent, whereas a display campaign might be lucky to achieve 0.09 percent.

Also, she explained that the main thing keeping companies from adopting social media marketing strategies is just a lack of awareness, followed by a lack of knowledge.

About 70 percent of Internet users spend time on social media platforms, Fox pointed out, so social media marketing is just a matter of going to where people are.  She stressed, “Social needs to be woven into the DNA of the organization.”