About SMM

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 reddit, 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".

With the advent of social media, consumers have become contributors, contributing to brand messaging as opposed to only passively receiving communication from marketers. "Over the last two years, market share of U.S. visits to the top 20 participatory websites
has grown from 3% of all U.S. Internet visits for the week ending June 18, 2005 to over 15.5% for the
week ending June 16, 2007; a growth rate of 416%. " . Influencing news coverage through press releases and media relations is far more difficult now with news channels creating and shaping stories hand-in-hand with the general public. The Hitwise Web 2.0 report findings suggest that social sites that are simpler to edit like Wikipedia see higher user participation (editing/uploading) to the tune of 4.38%. In comparison, content generation on video and photo sites is low (less than 1%).

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.