As social media marketing continues to gain a foothold in a marketer’s arsenal of communication tools, consumers will see an exponential increase in corporate blogging. Thousands of corporations across the world such as GM, Accenture and Proctor & Gamble have embraced blogging as a way to establish a dialogue with customers instead of talking “at” them through traditional communication methods. However, despite their popularity, a recent study on the Forrester Blog “Groundswell” highlights the low credibility associated with corporate blogs.

According to this study, blogs are ranked below newspapers, direct mail, online classifieds, corporate emails, wikis and the yellow pages in terms of credibility. The fact is that consumers can often see through the veiled attempts of blog authors to push products or bolster the reputation of executives in major corporations.

So, as marketers, how do we distinguish ourselves in the minds of cynical consumers while still leveraging this invaluable communications tool?

Unless you are a marketer at Citigroup and have received billions in bailout money from the Federal Government:  you have a lot of work to do in 2009. There will be no corporate bailouts for most of us. Tightening your marketing budgets while still trying to drive new business and retain clients, in addition to creating customer evangelism isn’t going to be easy. BUT it could be getting cheaper.

There are a number of new social media weapons in our arsenal that enable us to communicate inexpensively with consumers on a one-on-one basis — and become evangelists for their brand. For instance, my view of Twitter (a new mobile phone social media platform) was forever changed recently when I “Twittered” my love of the AMC show Madmen. Moments after tweeting about the show I was pinged by “Betty Draper”, the lead character’s wife in the show. I clicked on her profile, and the link took me to a Twitter profile page for all of the main characters from the show who were Twittering about their lives circa early 1960’s Manhattan. I can’t imagine how cheap it was to do this. As a consumer, it was something I felt connected to on a very individual basis. This is just one example of the type of new media initiatives marketers can employ to create brand evangelists for their products.

One might say the Mad Men example is too different from the majority of CPG and services companies located in Chicago. Investigate the products people are talking about online. Check out this article on Facebook to see the level of interest that a paper towel can generate. The bottom line is that people are passionate about the smallest things and they ARE talking. No better time to engage them than now.

When you have stories like today’s Adage article concerning consumers being tired repetition in advertising, there seems to be a real opportunity for companies to step into this “ad vortex” and engage people more easily. It’s a whole lot cheaper than a million dollar ad campaign AND you don’t have to change your name to do it.

Becoming involved with social media requires a time investment on such variables as marketing, optimization and monitoring. This has opened a new job market for positions such as blogger, social media consultants, community manager, enterprise architect, social media strategist and director of social media. Since 2005 social media jobs have increased by 325%. For more information on this phenomenon visit Jobs in Social Media.

Over the past two months I have attended four networking functions with groups such as the American Marketing Association and the Business Marketing Association with the headlining topic of social media. It’s the new business “buzz word” and becoming a major venue for people to communicate. A couple of the questions that keep coming up are “when does anyone have time to stay active on the social media sites?” and “which sites will be the most valuable to me?” Those are questions only each individual can answer. Needless to say if one wants to keep up there is a certain amount of social media interaction that is required. Check out this list of 50 social media networking sites to choose from.  And let me know which ones you’re keeping up with!