Social media or Web 2.0 is certainly the hype of the new trends in website marketing. Many tools are available to spent huge amounts of time and money into. New target marketing tools are popping up everywhere as the new kid on the block. The network is so overwhelming that no clear structure can be grasped as a means to distribute a message.
The network of gathering places encompasses a broad range of different media types. What comes to mind is a social network like Facebook or YouTube but there are actually several formats that contain significant marketing potential for online business.
It can be presented in many different forms or sites that are similar: video sites, online communities, company blogs, pod casting or personal websites in a network.
YouTube and alike offer videos that can be funny, silly, repeats of tv ads like the super bowl ones and sometimes political in nature.
MySpace and other social networks - This form of social media is unmistakably gaining in popularity because it draws together multiple elements of social marketing and makes them accessible to the masses of friends and family and everyone else.
Blogs - blogs can range for travelers that document their journey to corporate dialogues of product development
Forums - usually gathered around a certain topic, software or perhaps user groups.
This is merely an introduction to, but it does provide something for you to consider as an addition to other marketing strategies you may have in place. Promotion to these online communities allows you to take your message to the people and have fun while you share your message. As a message carrier it can draw people in once you catch their attention.
Now then the next question that come to my mind was: "How do to use the social media network?". Fortunately this question also appears to be a popular, I posed the question to Russell Wright from ThemeZoom. His answer was Charles Heflin's "The Social Marketing Blueprint Formula". From the introduction:
"
This report introduces a formula for neatly categorizing all of the various
functions of thousands of social networks into an easy to understand system
(formula) that (when implemented to create a blueprint) will yield an exponential
traffic effect. In other words, by using the social networks in a systematic (and
planned) way, you achieve a significant amount of traffic leverage on the back
end for a little bit of effort on the front end.
"
I understand the blueprint will be available somewhere this week, needless to say that this is going to make the same impact as Charles Heflin's "The Master Plan".