I love the illustrations on this site, and the idea. But I don’t think the IMA is going far enough with it. In the FAQ’s, it tells you there’s nowhere to send an idea for an art video, and you can’t upload one yourself. “But feel free to comment to your hearts content!” they chide. Um, somehow, I don’t think that’s enough. Can’t wait until they unleash this to be truly interactive.

Some highlights/lessons from the article:

Go where your customers are. The Scion Group, which owns and manages college housing, took its blogs to Facebook so they could reach their potential customers where they already play. Find out where your potential clients reside online by asking existing customers what types of social media they use (connecting off and online presences) and seeing where competitors and similar businesses in your field have successful online presences.

Don’t do it halfway! Posting events on social networks, blogging, having a Facebook profile won’t get you a lot of traction unless you have an integrated strategy for what you want to achieve, and actively work toward it every day. For example, PrepMe.com has a targeted, integrated social media presence to reach online clients: words of the day on Twitter, a Facebook crossword game, and Facebook group pages associated with high schools that use its services.

Be transparent. What does that mean? Being open, honest and responsive to online criticism. If someone complains about any aspect of your businesses, being online gives you the opportunity to acknowledge your shortcoming and make it right. Take advantage of that.

Similarly and to an even greater degree, Twitter has been the beneficiary from the surge in traffic from the middle-age demographic. Recent research from comScore discovered that 45 to 54 year olds are 36 percent more likely than the average Twitterer’s age to visit the site, which makes them the largest indexing age group. Overall, the average age of all 10 million twitterers is over the age of 35.

What does this mean for businesses? Social media, no longer a playground for the young, has reached a critical mass for use as an effective marketing tool. Coupled with the decline of print media, social media is now on the precipice of assuming its throne as king of reaching the masses. The onus is on businesses to come up with clever ways to effectively utilize these social media tools to bring customers back and reach new potential customers. And that’s where we come in. Let us create or refine your social media strategy and maximize these tools for you.

How the heck did they do it? Social media guru Mike Prasad, now with Girlgamer.com, walked us through the process.

Step 1: Start with Basic Branding

Prasad and Kogi cofounder Mark Manguera came up with the basics over a three-hour lunch. “We wanted to create an iconic food phenomenon,” Prasad says. They started with a name; something distinctive and short, but not too cultural to where it wouldn’t cross over to the main market. Like Pinkberry. “Gogi,” Korean for meat, was tossed around; Prasad heard “Kogi,” which he felt was more accessible. “The K stands for Korean,” he says.

Lesson 2: Choose the Correct Social Media Platforms

Prasad felt Kogi’s Korean tacos were an embodiment of L.A. street culture, the fusion and food found all along its windy, populated asphalt.

“We really wanted to leverage the brand and create a culture around the brand, and we couldn’t do that if we stayed in the same place all the time,” Prasad said. Twitter was the obvious social media tool to keep potential street eaters up to speed on where the truck would be. Sure, Kogi employees would blog scheduled stops for the week, but they also moved around a lot, both to where the crowd would take them and after cops might make them move.

“Twitter was like a game—find the Kogi truck,” Prasad says. “And it does help create [customer] ownership of the company.”

Lesson 3: Bridge the Gap

But Prasad didn’t believe in a “if you build it, they will come” approach. So he and the rest of Kogi’s gang hit the streets to “hustle.”

“You have to broadcast your message,” he says. “So we looked for ways to engage our audience. We came up with nightclubs. The first week was really full. Steve [Yoo, promoter] is one of the guys; he’d go in the club and hustle in the club: ‘hey, you gotta come check this out.’ He’d bribe the security guys at the door with tacos.

“I invited influential people to try the tacos—LAist, key people. They liked it and talked about it.”

Mommybloggers and Yelp reviews came next, spurred by Prasad’s plugging the truck to hungry bloggers just let out of late conferences.

Lesson 4: Shutup and Let it Go

Well, just kinda. When you base your marketing on interactive social media platforms, Prasad says, you have to be open to customer ownership and participation. The key is to hone it to the point where it benefits you and the customer.

“The brand has to be focused on its core value, but you have to be flexible enough to let it go and flow where the consumer base takes it,” he says. “If you try to control it too much, it backlashes. And if you don’t do it enough your company isn’t gonna sustain itself.”

Kogi seriously considers the taco and other menu selections customers request, or visiting a site—often, UCLA—where customers have asked and gathered a crowd. Several bands have already made their own Kogi theme songs, which the Taco Truck 2.0 happily showcases on its blog.

Social media marketing campaigns take elbow grease to bridge the gap between on and offline audiences. Don’t have time? Let us do it.

1. Target the right guest list

If you’re gonna invite all of your fans to a, say, happy hour event, know that the ones who live states away probably aren’t going to attend. Better to target more local friends. Take it a step further—ask and leave comments on your (local) opinion leader friends’ pages—preferably, people who live or work near your businesses—to recruit some more people to the event.

2. Use the right social network

Speaking of location, maybe Facebook isn’t the place to post your happy hour event. Maybe it’s better on a place like a Ning social network for your area. Find a group that engenders a category your business falls into, and start an event there. Or start your own group: “Downtown happy hour fanatics.”

3. Give due time

Not too long of a lead, and not too little. A week and a half is good to do the necessary legwork.

4. Jazz it up

Make a short, funny video about your event. Plant it on your Facebook page and plug and link to it on your ancillary social media outlets (Twitter, Ning, opinion leader blogs on which you comment). Visual media is arresting and instantly explanatory.