What’s “social media marketing”?

Wikipedia says:

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, BOOMj, YouTube, Dailymotion, Hi5, Gather.com, social web applications (webapps) such as reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon, Flickr, iLike, Wikipedia, Squidoo, Last.fm, Twitter, Eventful, ePinions, Shopit 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.

If you’ve been filing SMM under – “Web 2.0 junk that’s a total and complete waste of time”, you may want to have another look.

Especially at this site mentioned in Larry Chase’s Search Engine for Marketers – Social Media Marketing Resource Center:

“Social Media Today is a moderated community for social media bloggers, marketers, PR and media professionals. You can browse through the copious, informative content to get up to speed on the social media marketing phenomenon. However, as fitting for a social media marketing website, you are encouraged to create a profile, tell everyone about yourself, rate posts and even blog directly within this blog.”

You may just change your mind about SMM after you browse through this site. However, a word of warning – set some marketing goals before you get too involved in any form of SMM. Don’t let the “social” aspect take over – it can be a huge time sink, as you might expect.

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