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What is Social Media Marketing?

Written by: Cidnee Stephen

Article Overview: As a marketer, I find this topic overwhelms and confuses many business owners. Quite frankly, even in the marketing world - the jury is still out on the trends. But rest assured - social media is not going away. As our children grow up and take over corporate North America, the names of the tools may change, but the overall usage will only become more and more in use.

What is Social Media Marketing?

The key with social media is a bit like your holidays vs. work days. A nice balance can make a world of difference. Too much will keep you hiding behind a computer and too little - well chances are you won't know what you are missing out on!

As a marketer, I find this topic overwhelms and confuses many business owners. Quite frankly, even in the marketing world - the jury is still out on the trends. But rest assured - social media is not going away. As our children grow up and take over corporate North America, the names of the tools may change, but the overall usage will only become more and more in use.

To start, let's look at what Social Media really is. According to Wikipedia (which is itself a social media tool, by the way)

Social Media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate:

Technology + Human interaction = the construction of ideas (text), pictures (graphics), videos and/or audio.

• There is shared meanings and collaboration.
• Social media is not finite - there is not a set number of pages or hours.
• Several formats can be mixed.
• Social media is typically available via feeds, enabling users to subscribe via feed readers, and allowing other publishers to create what are called "mashups".

2 Key Ways Social Media can help your business.

1. So people can find you and your business more readily on the internet. Such optimization includes adding links to services such as Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us so that pages can be easily 'saved and submitted' to and for these services.

2. To position yourself and/or your company as an expert or leader in your industry. This includes writing content that is remarkable, unique, and newsworthy. This content can then be marketed by popularizing it or even by creating a "viral" video on YouTube and other video sites.

Examples of Social Media

Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video. Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Examples of social media applications are Google Groups (reference, social networking), Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Facebook (social networking), Youmeo (social network aggregation), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing), Avatars United (social networking), Second Life (virtual reality), Flickr (photo sharing), Twitter (social networking and microblogging) and other microblogs such as Jaiku and Pownce. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms like Mybloglog and Plaxo.

Beginner Steps #1

Set up a Linked In account and possibly a Facebook account. Linked In is a social site geared to business. Facebook tends to be more personal, though some people have certainly used it for business as well. It is free to set up both accounts. At a bare minimum, include your company web address and contact details. Try to use key search terms in your descriptions.

Invite Your Existing and Ongoing Prospects to link up with you.

Bigger Steps #1

Linked In has an Answers function where you can ask and answer questions. Answer at least one question a week in your area of expertise. When your answer is chosen by the questioner it helps you to earn Expert status in your industry.

Start Your Own Groups.

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  Social media : why should my business use this resource?
  Social Media Gains Momentum for B2B Marketers
  Where Are You in Social Media Adoption Curve?
  12 Tips for the Social Media Newbie
  Resourcing B2B social media

Article Tags: business owners, collaboration, digg, feed readers, holidays, human interaction, internet forums, marketer, marketing, media tool, north america, optimization, publishers, reddit, umbrella term, video sites, video technologies, viral video, wikipedia, youtube



Related Forum Posts
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":gvtxsu7g]Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff[/quote:gvtxsu7g] Hi Jeff, Thanks for the suggestion. Why don't you start a new post (with a poll) to see if there's enough interest in your idea for a social media section?
Re: Should Evan add a "Social Media Marketing" category to the f - Hi, Online Marketing would be a great title, and having sub categories would make it even better, there would plenty of categories to choose from, Social Media, SEO, Article Marketing and yes even Affiliate Marketing to name just a few, great looking site btw Jeff, take care, Carol
Re: Should Evan add a "Social Media Marketing" category to the f - Just as an update, Evan has extended the poll's expiration date and says he'd like to see at least 25 "yes" votes before implementing the new category. Moreover, it would probably be called "Online Marketing" instead of Social Media Marketing".
Kevin's Case Study #11 - A New Forum Category? - Hi Everyone, 2009 is a new year and I'd like to create a new forum category to jazz things up! In the past, there's been some interest voiced about adding a "Social Media Marketing", "Online Marketing", "Internet Marketing" or "Online Promotion" category. I'll implement [u:1g2tv6tf]ONE[/u:1g2tv6tf] of those new categories, but can someone first tell me what the difference would be between the existing "Marketing" section and one of those new options mentioned above? Thanks


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