SMM: is it complicated?!

If you remember a time when there was no Facebook or Twitter, you may also remember a time when social media marketing meant referring to MySpace, Delicious, commenting on various bloggers’ posts about your market sector, promoting yourself on forums, and so on.

These days, just trying to keep up with the different categories of social media can drive a marketer into a frenzy.
In fact, social media optimization and marketing in this environment dates back to 2006, when Rohit Bhargava posted another post on his blog. Of course, to some extent SMM existed before that post; it should be noted that Facebook was founded only two years before that date. Rohit put the rules of the game together in a system that others had already had to expand. A few years later he updated those rules.

As you might expect to hear, since we are dealing with the world of the Internet, a lot has happened in the six years that have elapsed since Rohit wrote his post. If you try to comprehend all of them in the aggregate, it sounds downright terrifying. Business Insider has put up an absolutely insane, but painfully meticulous infographic to clarify the issue of interest to us. But even the creator of this graphic left some things out; for example, this chart did not include Pinterest, although, in truth, it should have been included.

Now, the chart breaks down those services and Web sites that are somehow relevant to social media marketing into at least 28 different categories! Twenty-eight! And they’re all perfectly legal, as far as I can tell. Suddenly I’m starting to feel a certain sympathy for General Motors for removing their ads from Facebook However, it may just be that they weren’t able to keep it up and decided not to try at all. And if you are interested in what SMM is, follow this link media social marketing.

Facebook and Twitter, in fact, form a special class of social media; without a doubt, they have created several independent categories in this sphere. For example, Twitter has its own advertising apps for third firms, while Facebook predominantly promotes its own apps and its own games, which Business Insider’s infographics distinguish as a separate category.

Twitter apps include TwitPic, StockTwits, wefollow, tweetmeme, twitvid, Listorious and others. The specific objectives of these services may be different, but in general they try to help users more fully reveal their identity, to make more functionality and efficiency available to them on this microblogging site. In other words, they make it easier for users to pursue their personal interests with Twitter

For example, TwitPic helps users post images and videos on Twitter. StockTwits describes itself as a «financial communication platform» and seeks to streamline those message streams on Twitter that are centered around this kind of information. In addition, it also seems to have its own, specific sphere of operation, with its own members, bloggers and the like; it also provides a «professional» service, which is still in beta. Twitvid advertises itself as «a social network that will connect you with the latest and greatest videos on topics and people you find interesting»; it seems to collect this information from Twitter. Listorious allows you to find people on Twitter by topic, region or profession — and interview them by asking questions through their interface. You can also add yourself to Listorious.

Well, if you want to promote your company, you can take a different approach to the apps available on Twitter. You can search for Twitter apps in general, and then find some of the apps you find to do the above work with your marketing plan. For example, wefollow («we follow…») offers its clients a list of Twitter users grouped by interest, something that should be of considerable value to almost anyone in the marketplace.

Or, if you’re ambitious, you can think of Twitter as a «fire hose» of information and work with someone to create a special Twitter app that fits your company’s theme or your personal goals. For example, it’s no surprise that StockTwits was founded in 2008 by longtime investor Howard Lindzon. Maybe you could come up with an app for Twitter that appeals to your potential customers or target audience and then promote it; every time a particular Twitter user clicks on it, they will be reminded of your company. If you take that approach, you have to look to see if Twitter already has applications like yours. You don’t want to reinvent the wheel! At the very least, you want to do it better.