Hiring the Internet

Part 1 of our Two-Part Primer on Social Media Marketing

Facebook. Flickr. YouTube. Wikipedia. MySpace. Last.fm. Yahoo! Groups. Second Life. Twitter. Message boards. Wikis. Forums. Blogs!

So much Internet usage nowadays revolves around these various applications, technologies, and formats. What do they have in common? They’re all a part of the Social Media phenomenon, which grows at a monstrous rate. And it would only be expanding so vigorously if someone was making money off of it.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) involves various social interactions on the Internet, resulting in the production of messages, posts, videos, audio files, etc. Because of the overwhelming popularity of these sites, marketers have been jumping in to promote brand awareness and target specific demographics. Social media is sometimes used synonymously with Social networking, but for the sake of clarity we will refer to social media, which is a larger umbrella term.

Social Media Marketing (SMM), some say, is a necessary part of any online business presence. But there are a few caveats with this very general advice. For one, imagine promoting your product as a funky application on Facebook. Would it make sense? If your company produced light bulbs, would it be logical that there would be fans or enthusiasts for your product? I would hazard a “no” to that question. Products that would make sense for Facebook applications and groups would be “fun” ones such as movies, cosmetics, fashion, soft drinks, magazines, and even fountain pens.

Context is everything for an online marketing campaign. There is no point at all in you partaking in MySpace if you offer, say, a luxury service. But MySpace would be perfect for new musical acts. The whole point of SMM is to support branding and word-of-mouth about your business, to drum up and sustain excitement about your products and services. With the exception of traditional banner advertisements on social networking sites, these are all very indirect ways (“pull,” not push, marketing) to generate interest and revenue.

So what are the advantages of SMM?

1. Easily accessible demographic data.
2. Almost guaranteed admittance into the prized 18-40 year age group
3. Very cheap, and sometimes free, method of advertising
4. Dynamic interactions with customers such as apps, fan clubs, contests, and exclusive promotional deals

Social Media Marketing will continue as long as the sites persist in popularity. Heavy hitter companies know that social media sites mean big bucks. (The high volume of traffic that sites receive is reason enough for advertisers to pay competitive prices for banner space.) AOL bought out Bebo. Google purchased YouTube. Yahoo! acquired Flickr. The Social Media parade marches on.

We recommend that you check out this helpful article on SMM, which categorizes the different types by function, as opposed to technology or format (e.g., message boards and videos).

Update: Now read the second part of our Primer on Social Media Marketing: what to do and where to get started.

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