Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a set of online marketing techniques that leverage social media. 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 (e.g. the vast majority of video on YouTube is published by non-YouTube employees). Social media optimization (SMO) is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites.



Social media marketing has two important aspects. The first, SMO, refers to on-page tactics through which a webmaster can improve a website for the age of social media. Such optimization includes adding links to services such as Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us so that their pages can be easily 'saved and submitted' to and for these services.

Social media marketing, on the other hand, is about building ways that fans of a brand or company can promote it themselves in multiple online social media venues.

Some social media marketers offer to write 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, including getting involved in blogs, forums, and niche communities. Others in the social media world consider this form of social media marketing Astroturfing or "fake grass roots".

According to Lloyd Salmons, first chairman of the Internet Advertising Bureau social media council "Social media isn't just about big networks like Facebook and MySpace, it's about brands having conversations.".

Examples

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.

Social media software applications

Examples of social media applications include:

Communication

* Blogs: Blogger (service), Livejournal, TypePad, Wordpress, Vox, WordFrame
* Internet Forums: Vbulletin, Phpbb
* Microblogs / Presence apps: Twitter, Plurk, Pownce and Jaiku
* Social networking: Avatars United, Bebo, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, Skyrock, Netlog, Hi5 _(website)
* Social network aggregation: FriendFeed, Youmeo
* Events: Upcoming.org, Eventful, Meetup.com

Collaboration

* Wikis: Wikipedia, PBwiki, wetpaint
* Social bookmarking: Delicious, StumbleUpon, Stumpedia
* social news: Digg, Mixx, Reddit
* Opinion sites: epinions, Yelp

Multimedia

* Photo sharing: Flickr, Zooomr, Photobucket, SmugMug
* Video sharing: YouTube, Vimeo, Revver
* Livecasting: Ustream, Justin.tv, Skype
* Audio and Music Sharing: imeem, The Hype Machine, Last.fm, ccMixter

Entertainment

* Virtual worlds: Second Life, The Sims Online
* Online gaming: World of Warcraft, Everquest, Age of Conan
* Game sharing: Miniclip