An Intro to Social Media Marketing

Posted by Dustin Titus on Monday, November 2, 2009
Social media marketing is a term that describes the act of using social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other collaborative Internet form of media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service. Common social media marketing tools include Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com), Facebook (www.facebook.com) , Flickr (www.flickr.com) and YouTube (www.youtube.com).

In the context of Internet marketing, social media refers to a collective group of web properties whose content is primarily published by users, not direct employees of the property.

Social media marketing has three important aspects:
  1. Creating buzz or news worthy events, videos, tweets, or even blog entries that attract attention, and become viral in nature. Buzz is the piece that makes social media marketing work, it replicates a message not through purchase of an ad, but through user to user contact.
  2. Building ways that fans of a brand or company can promote it themselves in multiple online social media venues. Fan pages in Twitter, MySpace of Facebook are exactly this.
  3. It is conversational. Social media marketing is not fully controlled by the organization, it allows for user participation and dialogue. Potentially a badly designed social media marketing campaign can backfire on the organization that created it. That is the reason that SMM (Social Media Marketing) campaigns must fully engage and respect the users.
Source Wikipedia.org

Did you know?
  • There are 77 million Facebook users, according to the study. Facebook captures a wider range of users, from high-school and college fun, leisure user to business and parents and grandparents. They are more likely to be married (40%), caucasian (80%) and retired (6%) than users of the other social networks. They have the second-highest average income, at $61,000, and an average of 121 connections.
  • Average number of facebook registrations per day is 250,000
  • Twitter users are the super-user group. Twitterers are more interested than the others in many subjects but skew particularly high in all news categories, restaurants, sports, politics, personal finance and religion. They’re more likely to buy books, movies, shoes and cosmetics online than the other groups.
  • The average Twitter user has 126 followers
  • Only 20% of the Twitter traffic comes through the website. Third party software on smart phones and computers contribute the rest.
How can you help your Organization?
  • Educate your self
There are a ton of awesome internet resources for educating your self about Social Media and Social Media Marketing. Check out some of my favorite resources; Mashable (www.mashable.com) and Marketing Profs (www.marketingprofs.com). For specific insight into how the world of Soial Media works start with some awesome Blog sites; Technorati (www.technorati.com) and The Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com)
  • Sign Up
Three simple steps; 1. Get an account, 2. Setup your profile, 3. Add\Follow your friends or interests. These three steps can get you into Social Media. Spend 30 minutes with Facebook.com or Twitter.com and you'll have a way better understanding of the technology and the power behind it from a marketeer's perspective.
  • Tell everybody you know
Thats right! Be social about it, call, email, text, share, comment. There are a million ways you can tell your community about your brand. When I start a campaign I also send out a mass text message or email to everybody I know. Not only do they love to be kept in the loop but they love to know what you are doing. Everybody will engage your brand just to be a part of it.
  • Contribute to the community
Pictures, Video and Text are all a great way to contribute. Use your account to post photos and videos to your brand's Facebook Fan Page, Twitter Accounts and You Tube Channel. You are already part of the community! Participate!
  • Help Others Contribute
Teach a man to fish, fed him for life. There is no better way to get your brand out there than working with your community to help them establish a way to help you. Show somebody how to post to blogger or how to even Retweet on twitter.

A special thanks to Wikipedia.org and the rest of the social community!
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