What is SMM

Social Media Marketing or SMM is a fast emerging online marketing technique that seeks to transform web marketing by employing Social Media. Now Social media websites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc. provide a platform for their users to network and communicate. Further, blogging websites like Blogger, BlogSpot etc. involve a deeper discussion with people of similar interests coming together and generating a social know through fundamental interaction. SMM seeks to leverage this social knot to promote online businesses. In simple words, Social Media Marketing tends to be the online equivalent of “word of mouth” advertising in the traditional marketing framework.

SMM techniques span a wide range of marketing objectives, ranging from online brand engagement to social retailing. As a result the SMM techniques have a panoptic range of underlying activities comprising of blog submissions, reputation management etc. With a majority of the online shoppers being a part of one social network or the other, it is imperative that the marketers focus on social media optimization as a part of their online strategy.

Social Media Marketing is really nothing more than social websites that are a great way to market your message, products and/or services. They are not usually there for a sales pitch or hard sales tactic; instead they are more of a social platform where people can talk about all kinds of topics.

What makes these social media websites so powerful is that everyone on there has their own community of friends, family and followers that they allow into their community or page. This means they want to hear what they have to say. This means the topics there are trusted and welcomed recommendations and that’s the marketing part of social media marketing.

When people want to find a product or service, they generally ask family and friends for a recommendation. Social media marketing websites have a captive audience in one place. With the click of the enter key or from their phone, a person can ask for anything and people will respond with names, numbers, links, photos and all kinds of information.

So that is the simple version of what a Social Media Marketing website is. There are countless books and blogs out there that can break it down into months of reading that will give you about the same information in the end. Most likely you don’t have that kind of time and want to get back to what you do best – sell your brand.

Why Social Media Marketing

First and foremost – There are too many social media marketing websites out there to participate in all of them. Everyone is going to tell you that you need to be on the one that they are on. You might even have heard it at a seminar that you need to sign up today! The truth is they may or may not be correct.

You only have so many hours in the day and you should be using those hours in the most productive way. There are many great SSM sites on the internet but chasing most of them can get expensive. To properly maintain these sites you need quality information, quality followers, timely submissions of interesting or pertinent topics and a lot more important pieces of the puzzle.

The fact is some businesses just don’t do well on many of the SMM sites online. The companies that do well are the social types – restaurants, hair salons, pubs, sporting clubs, celebrities, etc. They do well because people have an interest in them. The less social the company the more difficult it gets finding followers and thus their marketing time and efforts become costly. Think about who you follow or would like to follow – a company that sell rocks or your favorite restaurant? Both might offer weekly specials but one is definitely more appetizing!

Sure those were basic reasons and there are more reasons why you should or should not join one of these social media marketing websites but again, you probably have more important things to do then to research for weeks. Here are some steps to achieving a successful social media marketing campaign:

Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy

Create a Social Media Marketing Plan

Implement Your Social Media Marketing Plan

Continually Optimize Your Social Media Marketing

Make sure you read the other pages of information explaining 1 through 5 for a better understanding.