26 Social Media Marketing Pointers
Social media continues to evolve. In the process, social media’s become integrated into how we do marketing and continues to account for a larger portion of the marketing spend.
To help you with your social media marketing, here are the ABC’s of social media marketing.
- A is for apps which are used on mobile and tablet devices. It’s also for avatar, the representation that you use on social media platforms.
- B is for blogs, a form of CMS (content management system) that enables everyone to be a publisher. They’re at the heart of social media.
- C is for communications and comments. Social media extends communications and provides for the ability to have many-to-many exchanges.
- D is for discussion boards. These are the grand-daddy of social media forums and predate the Web. They’re still a great mechanism for enabling participants to communicate with each other in asynchronous time.
- E is for email. While this communication format isn’t what pops into most people’s heads when you say social media, it’s what keeps people connected with what’s happening on social media platforms and alerts them to return. E is also for engagement – getting consumers to interact with your product.
- F is for Facebook, the hard-to-ignore 900 pound gorilla of social media. But more important for most marketers are friends and fans. Your goal is to expand your customer base and engage your most loyal fans.
- G is for Google Plus, the newest entrant in the social media field. G is also for games and its strategic kin, gamification. Many social media platforms have games integrated into them for entertainment value. Others use gamification principles to engage users.
- H is for hiding which is what many lurkers do who don’t want to reveal their true identity. H is also for Hootsuite and Hashable.
- I is for the influencer who sway others by their actions. Marketers are always on the lookout for those influencers who are important in their specific niche. I is also for identity, your real life self.
- J is for Join to become a member of a social media platform. Joining is often associated with an invitation from another friend or colleague.
- K is for killer titles that every blog needs to attract an audience and induce readers to share it. It’s also Klout, a platform that assesses participants ranking and relative reach on social media platforms.
- L is for Location-Based Services (or LBS) such as Foursquare that get members to check-in and contribute ratings and comments. L is also for LinkedIn, the professional social media platform.
- M is for media that’s at the heart of social media marketing. Modern social media platforms can support media entities as well as provide different forms of targeted advertising. M is also for microblogging, a shortened form of blogging. In cases like Twitter, it’s limited to 140 characters. M is also for the metrics you need to track your social media marketing spend.
- N is for lovable nerd that you keep around to help you with your technology problems. The reality is that on social media it’s difficult to find an old fashioned nerd.
- O is for online communities that are central to social media interactions.
- P is for publishing. It’s at the core of social media because participants share their comments, blog posts, photos, videos and presentations. P is also for privacy that can be difficult to protect on social media. P is also for photos, podcasts and presentations, content that’s posted to various platforms. Lastly P is for Pay-It-Forward, the mentality at the center of social media’s exchanges.
- Q is for Q&A sites where participants help each other by sharing their knowledge. Q is also for Quora, one example of a Q&A site.
- R is for ratings and reviews, that increasingly drive sales. R is also for RSS (really simple syndication) a means of distributing feeds, short blurbs of text. R is also for respect that users must show for each other.
- S is for social media. (I know that was so easy I couldn’t resist.) S is also for social media optimization and search engine optimization (SEO) that improve your social media content’s ability to be found.
- T is for trust. Trust in today’s marketplace is difficult to earn. It’s important to trust your social media colleagues. T is also for social media tribe that you build across different platforms. T is also for Twitter and Tumblr two different microblogging platforms.
- U is for users and user-generated content. These are the people that participate on social media platforms and contribute their content.
- V is for video that users love to consume. V is also for virtual worlds, a specialized form of social media such as Second Life and Habbo.
- W is for wikis that allow users to create and edit interlinked web pages. Wikipedia is the best-known example. W is also for WordPress, the most popular of the blogging software systems.
- X is for x-factor that unknown element involved in any marketing program. It’s also for Xanga, a blogging platform.
- Y is for YouTube, which in addition to being the 900 pound gorilla of online video is the number two search engine.
- Z is for Zynga, the company behind social media’s most popular games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars on Facebook.
As a marketer, the social media options you have to extend and improve your effectiveness continue to grow. What’s critical is using the appropriate options for your business to achieve your objectives.
Is there anything that you’d add to this list? If so, please use the comment section below.
Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen
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Photo credit: Schnaars via Flickr
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