Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, YouTube, Dailymotion, Hi5, Gather.com, social web applications (webapps) such as Digg, Stumbleupon, Flickr, iLike, Wikipedia, Squidoo, Last.fm, Twitter, Eventful, ePinions and others as well as within 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life, ActiveWorlds, Moove and There.com. The goals of each SMM program or campaign will differ for every business or organization, however most will involve some form of building an idea or brand awareness, increasing visibility, encouraging brand feedback and dialogue as well as to possibly sell a product or service. SMM may also include online reputation management.

Social media includes websites where news, photos, videos, and podcasts are hosted via websites through user submission. Typically, these websites include mechanisms to allow users to vote on content which makes items submitted by users more or less "popular."

Most online communities don’t welcome traditional direct or hard sell techniques so an effective SMM campaign will require more finesse to execute properly. SMM campaigns must be targeted to the community you want to reach with a message that appeals to them and invites contribution. Some common ways of achieving this are with authoritative information, entertainment, humor or controversy.

SMM is related to other online marketing tactics such as Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Viral Marketing, Word of Mouth Marketing, and Social Media Optimization. Many believe Social Media Optimization (SMO) takes a passive role in establishing the framework for different social sites to connect themselves. Others feel SMO is taking the principles of SEO and applying them to social websites. SMM takes a more active planned role directing, influencing or suggesting community members create and connect the content.

Search media optimization

Social media optimization (SMO) is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites. Methods of SMO include adding RSS feeds, adding a "Digg This" button, blogging and incorporating third party community functionalities like Flickr photo slides and galleries or YouTube videos. Social media optimization is a form of search engine marketing.

Social media optimization is in many ways connected as a technique to viral marketing where word of mouth is created not through friends or family but through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites. In a similar way the engagement with blogs achieves the same by sharing content through the use of RSS in the blogsphere and special blog search engines such as Technorati.

Some important rules in SMO are:

• Increase linkability
• Make tagging and bookmarking easy
• Reward inbound links
• Help your content travel
• Encourage the mashup
• Be a user resource
• Reward helpful and valuable users
• Participate
• Know how to target your audience
• Create content
• Be real
• Try new things