What is Social Media Marketing?
Social Media is a term used to describe the technologies and platforms upon which internet users share content online. It is part of the web 2.0 revolution which has enabled users to participate in online conversations, share documents, images and video. It allows individuals to become both publishers and consumers of content, and it is this collaboration that has made it so popular. It has quite literally changed the way in which people communicate, it is here to stay and if you haven’t considered it as part of your marketing plans then you really should read on to learn more.
We’ve highlighted here the most popular type of Social Media:
Social Networking
Social networking is based around platforms, known as social networkd, which are designed to allow people to interact with each other online. Allowing users to create profiles of themselves, that they can share with (usually) like minded individuals, such as family, friends, colleagues etc. Social networking allows interaction between one another, through sharing of information in all forms. Some of the most well known and heavily used social networks are:-
Video sharing
As the name suggests this is where you can upload and share video content online. The most successful, users can upload and review and comment on other videos, whether it is a bulldog on a skateboard or a demonstration of latest products. It is now an essential part of viral marketing campaigns and widely used by organisations big and small targeted consumers or businesses.
Blogging
Blog is a shortened form of Web Log, (but also a good way to think of it is Better Listings On Google). A blog is a type of website that allows the owner to post comments about pretty much anything. Run by individuals, businesses and communities, they allow true two way collaboration, with most blogs allowing responses to be posted in a live environment.
Forums
Similar to blogs, forums allow two way interaction, they could be described as a web version of a newsgroup, allowing people to post messages and comment on other messages. This form of social networking allows for multiple discussions betwwen multiple users.
Social Bookmarking
This type of social networking is a method for internet users to share, organize and manage websites that they like or find useful. It allows users to ‘tag’ a site and then share it with others allowing them to provide an overview of what is on the website, with either free text comments, votes or tags. Users save links to web pages that they want to remember or share, they can be either private or public (shared with a specified group). The bookmarked sites can be categorised to allow ease of retrieval.
The most popular bookmarking sites include StumbleUpon, del.icio.us and Digg
Photo sharing
This an increasingly popular use of social networks, and is a great way of sharing your photography or images, with Facebook’s photosharing application being the most popular in the world. There are also sites dedicated to just photo sharing, which as the name suggests allows users to upload and share images with others on the web. The most successful of these is Flickr.
Micro-blogging
A relatively new social networking method, micro blogging is the next step from Blogs. In effect when you hear this term people are mostly talking about Twitter. Twitter is a social network which allows blogging content but, as the name micro suggests, in very small posts (no more than 140 characters to express yourself).
If you'd like to learn more about how social media marketing and social networking can help your business, then call one of our social media marketing experts on 0844 871 72 72.