Social media marketing, also referred to as SMM is a process that helps to gain traffic and attention through a social media website. Twitter is a popular site that allows people to share brief messages and updates with others. SMM programs concentrate mainly on creating attention-grabbing content that is readily shared by readers with their social networks.
This form of promotion involves use of sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. These sites allow you to connect as well as interact on a personalized as well as dynamic level. Compared to other forms of promotion this one is much more dynamic and effective.
Tagging articles and blog entries for submission as well as voting on sites like Digg are a few basic forms of social media marketing. Twitter, for example, is a social site that allows people to share brief messages or updates with fellow users. Facebook on the other hand is a complete social networking site where people can share updates and photos as well as perform various other activities.
SMM involves internet-based dialogue or interactive exchanges conducted through a social networking platform. Its goal is to acquire new customers and to encourage existing customers to buy something. However, its tentacles spread far beyond building interactive relationships with customers and facilitating online sales.
Short-term goals include attracting attention online and drawing higher amount of traffic to a website. Other goals include generating Facebook “likes” and attracting more followers on Twitter. SMM is not the same as social marketing. The former relies solely on use of social media (SM). The latter refers to designing a marketing effort that tries to change behavior and make changes in society. It makes use of SM but does not have to.
There are several types of SMM. Blogs are an example and they have become very popular and are widely being used by businesses to communicate with customers as well as members of the public. Blogs are cheap and they are also easy to keep up. Micro blogging is another type and Twitter is a prime example of it. Social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn are a couple of social networks that are widely being used by businesses.
Reddit and Digg are news-sharing websites that fall into the class of content sharing and social news website. Content sharing and social news websites are an important SMM type. The same goes for review and opinion sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp.