Social Marketing Revolution

I agree with 9 out of 10. I don't think social media, done right, lowers your marketing costs (#7). Maybe eventually, and eventually is in three years or more when your social engine is really tuned, you might sort of lower costs.

More likely you costs will shift from paying for robots to paying for people. We think that is a GREAT trend consistent with the say we see he web moving (from traffic acquisition to creating cherished and valued experience).

Email Rocks
You wouldn't be too far wrong if you viewed ALL of your social marketing as having a single purpose - building your email list. Social may be a POOR conversion medium if you think of conversion as MONEY, but it works great when you ask people to join your tribe. 

Once joined magical things can happen not the least of which is you have to BUY LESS support from outside. Once your tribe is built and scaling you control your own destiny. If Google trashes your organic listings you have a way to recover. 

If a competitor steals away customers with an amazing offer you can counter with email marketing to YOUR tribe. Makes you wonder why we aren't spending a lot more time finding new ways to build our list such as:

* Appointing List Building Ambassadors (i.e. give your 1% contributors the job of helping to build your list). 
* Contest and games designed to build our lists.

* Facebook advertising (building our list was what I could get FB to do).

* Join Our Email Tribe CTAs all over everything.

* QRCodes that prompt mobile signups.

* etc...

We've ignored email for the shiny new things. Perhaps we should go back to the tried, true and profitable most social network - our email lists.