What is Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing is primarily internet-based but also ties in with non-internet based methodologies such as word of mouth advertising. Social media marketing is the process of promoting a site, business or brand through social media channels by engaging and interacting with existing consumers or potential consumers.

The term most often refers to activities that are used to enable marketers to build links, attention and receive large amounts of traffic for their company or site. The core of social media marketing is the idea that by listening to customers, companies will understand what the consumer values and needs. In order to understand what your customer wants, their preferences, and behavior and web ability you must utilize social media marketing in order to gain a holistic view of your users.

The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing

All forms of social media marketing fall under the umbrella of at least on of the following five forms of action according to Ben Willis at "MarketingPilgrim.com". More often than not, the same channel will include two or more of these pillars:

1. Declaration of Identity

2. Identity through Association

3. User-initiated Conversation

4. Provider-initiated conversation

5. In-Person Interaction

Your declaration of identity is how you claim your value, state who you are and where you can be found. Your customer stumbles upon your online identity that you define and declare. This can be anything from the “About Us” page on a blog to a MySpace Profile. Although this pillar of social media marketing encompasses very little interaction outside of your own declaration, it becomes extremely critical in defining and carving out how you will benefit from your marketplace.

Social media optimization (SMO)

Social media optimization 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 related to search engine marketing, but differs in several ways, primarily the focus on driving traffic from sources other than search engines, though improved search ranking is also a benefit of successful SMO.

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 blogosphere and special blog search engines such as Technorati.

Social Media optimization is considered an integral part of an online reputation management (ORM) or Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) strategy for organizations or individuals who care about their online presence.