Social Marketing has become the latest buzz word in the internet marketing industry. Organizations, companies, and bloggers are now using this method to convey their messages to their intended audiences effectively and quickly. There are many tools, perhaps too many tools at their disposal to be able to create effective messages.
Some of these tools include the ever growing FaceBook, a social networking site that has grown from being exclusive to college students, to an internet marketing vehicle for companies, bloggers, and yes, even celebrities. There are many other social networking sites besides FaceBook such as MySpace, Bebo, Xanga, and even Ning which allows you as a user to custom create your own little social network.
In addition to social networking sites there are also micro blogging sites. These micro blogging sites such as twitter, tumblr, and Pownce (now Six Apart), have been great vehicles for launching the latest news, keeping tabs on the recent elections, and simply updating your friends and followers alike of your daily activities. All of these tools, from social networking sites, blogging, microblogging, and doing search optimization, can become rather overwhelming for most companies, and surely so for people. All of these tools have gotten a term coined by the marketing industry, called social marketing. If you have a business, a blog, are a celebrity, or a large corporation, it becomes more and more important to hire professionals to do social marketing for you.
The days of getting the message out via static images in newspapers and magazines are over. Television ads are also not as effective as before as more and more people have turned into engaged consumers, instead of passive consumers. Consumers want to choose what to view, what to buy, and what to admire. To become successful and get your message out there, you need to be actively involved in all of these social marketing tools. However, if you dedicate your time to that, you may not have the time of day to effectively run your business. Perhaps now is the time for you to think about social media marketing by talking to people and see what they think about it, as well as do some research on your own.