This is Social Media Advertising

What is Social Media Advertising
or Social Media Marketing ?

Before we are able to understand Social Media Marketing we need to define “Social Media” and “Social Networking”. Simply put, Social Media is user generated content on the Internet. You may have come across the term web2.0 recently. Social Media and Social Networking are web2.0. In the early days (well, actually just a few years ago) websites were static and passive. They were mostly online corporate brochures with very little interaction. The only way to participate was to send an email to the keeper of the website and hope he returned back to you. That was called web1.0.

Today Social Media refers to a collective group of websites whose content is primarily written and published by users and not owners or employees of the website. For example most of the videos you see on YouTube are uploaded or published by ordinary people like you and me; not by YouTube employees or staff. Nearly all articles published on Wikipedia are written and/or edited by people who are not connected to Wikipedia in any way. Instead of normal corporate websites which are created by the companies, the contents on Social Media websites are created by you and me. And possibly Larry from next door.

Social Media is people exchanging personal comments and views using various online platforms such as blogs and micro blogs, chat rooms, social networks and bookmarks, bulletin boards, photo and video sharing sites and virtual worlds.

Here are just a few of these Social Media platforms:

• Facebook
• YouTube
• Flickr
• Twitter
• Second Life
• Tumblr
• Stumble Upon
• MySpace
• Google Groups
• Delicious
• QZone
• Wipedia and other wikis

According to Wikipedia “Social Media Marketing” also known as “Social Influence Marketing” is the act of using social influencers, social media platforms and online communities for marketing, publication relations and customer service. To put it in more simple terms, Social Media Marketing (SMM) or Social Media Advertising (SMA) is a particular segment of marketing that utilises Internet's social platforms to deliver commercial messages to potential consumers.

Social Media Marketing is a collection of methods and operations for generating commercial publicity through social media websites and online communities. Social Media Advertising is planning and executing advertising campaigns on those platforms.

The reasoning behind this action is simple: The advertisers have to go where their clients hang out. And today their client’s hang out on web2.0 Social Media websites.

Ok. That’s the easy part.

The hard part is to execute and manage the form of advertising or communication on these social platforms. If you go in with a normal hard sell ad message you’d use on traditional media, such as magazines, radio and TV, you’re almost certain to crash and burn quickly. Direct commercial messages are quickly considered as spam and you will find yourself black listed in no time.

Here are some interesting facts and figures about Social Media as a marketing and advertising vehicle:

• There are over 13.000.000 articles on Wikipedia.
• More than 100.000.000 videos are viewed on YouTube daily.
• There are currently over 200.000.000 blogs published.
• Second Life has over 1.5 million residents.
• Almost 40% of active Internet users subscribe to an RSS feed.
• 57% of them have joined a Social Network.
• Three out of four Americans use social networks.
• Visiting social networks is more popular than online pornography.
• Twitter features over 3.000.000 tweets or micro blogging messages per day.
• Facebook is used more than 80.000.000 hours daily.
• Close to 15.000.000 pieces of information (photos, wall posts, links, news, notes etc.) are shared on Facebook; daily.
• Michael Jackson, Barack Obama and Vin Diesel have close to 30.000.000 fans combined on Facebook.
• Over 90 % of social media users think all companies should have a presence
  in social media.
• Generation Y will out number Baby Boomers in 2010.
• 96% of Generation Y has joined a social network.
• About 12.5 % of married couples in the United States met through a social network.
• Facebook added 100.000.000 users in just under 9 months.
• If Facebook was a country it would be the fourth biggest in the world after China, India and the United States.
• 80% of the companies are using LinkedIn to find new employees.
• Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres have more Twitter followers than there are people in Ireland.

If you are in marketing or advertising there is no way to avoid Social Media Advertising anymore. It is simply a must for modern time companies to participate in.

If you are an entrepreneur you need to put together a Social Media Plan for your business. In your Social Media Plan you must include a collection of web2.0 components, mostly websites and blogs that are closely related to your business.