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Social media describes the online technologies and practices that we use to share ideas, opinions insights, experiences and perspectives with others. There are online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, while social media technology includes an assorted array of online communications hubs driven by users: Internet forums, message boards, blogs, podcasts, wikis, and videos. There’s also picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, and music-sharing. MarCom has been part of these new online marketing trends since the beginning.
Social networks were only beginning to gain traction in the spring of 2007; now memberships are in the hundreds of millions. People are having interactive conversations online in social media websites like MySpace, and Facebook. There are also social networking and video sharing places like You Tube and Google video, virtual reality sites such as Second Life, Last.fm and iTunes for personal music, Flickr to share your photos and micro blogs like Twitter or Pownce. Social Media is growing exponentially.
Social Media Optimization includes offsite optimization strategies with the intent of distributed content across multiple social media networks. Tools for this include adding links to services such as Digg, Del.icio.us or Readdit. This includes writing unique content embedded with your key words and phrases, so when people search online, there’s a better chance of finding your content via the search engines.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) involves using a number of social networking platforms to brand a product or service. Search Engine Optimization or SEO techniques of communication, to the end consumer.
We’ve been testing social media marketing strategies in this space since its inception, starting with forum posting, back around the year 2000. Now we ghostwrite blogs for clients, shoot video shorts, manage podcasts and conduct creative viral email campaigns.
Social Media Marketing is about being social so this offsite work includes research, and a social media strategy with specific tactics for getting involved and having two way conversations with target audiences. The goal here is to create pages that provide links back to your website, for inbound traffic and links. We want these pages to rank well in the search engines under your key words and phrases, and at the same time build traffic on the social media sites to attract attention.
MarCom offers many ways to market to your target audiences in the places that they hang out. Here’s how:
Traditional and Edgy Social Media Marketing
Traditional is for older demographic target audiences, edgy is for younger, hipper demographic target audiences. Not mutually exclusive. Keyword emphasis can shift from month to month.
Traditional
Article publishing, electronic press releases, blogs, directories, text linking.
Edgy
MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, YouTube, Flicker, and more.
 Ghostwriting and managing blogs.
Forum posting in niche communities.
Video shorts for You Tube, and more.
Content writing
Articles
Electronic press releases
White papers, and more
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