What is social media?
The term ‘social media’ of late is attracting widespread interest, thanks due to user-generated media such as blogs, forums, social networking sites, photo/video sharing sites, etc. The Web is now the interactive and participatory platform unlike few years back when it just offered the ‘read only’ content. Improved browsers, broadband connectivity and dynamic web pages have also contributed to increased user activities. Major sites based on user generated content are Digg, eBay, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Orkut, Second Life, Wikipedia and You Tube.
Social media and Internet marketing
Alongside search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising, there are other methods of Internet marketing. Social media marketing or SMO is one such method, which is a practice of promoting a site, brand or business by interacting with the existing or potential customers, using social media sites as a platform.
Social media sites provide a platform to people to meet, communicate, collaborate and share and discuss information. Social media marketing, therefore, is all about building a rapport or a bond with social sites. The usual SMO methods include distributing interesting content widely across the social media sites, building links with those sites and inviting their opinions. Placing advertisements on social sites also helps a lot.
How it works and what are the benefits
Internet marketing through social media can sometimes work the wonders. If your content is witty, interesting and compelling, if will catch the attention of users and they will then spread it like wildfire. It is similar to word-of-mouth advertisement in the traditional media (newspapers, TV, radio, films).
Let’s now see some benefits of social media optimization. For one thing, it is very cheap compared to traditional media. There is no limit to the number of topics on which one can contribute the content. There is also no limit to the number of pages and there are no constraints of time. The audience can participate at any time they wish. Users can add comments to forums and blogs or even edit the articles. Users can also bookmark your site if they like it. All the above measures can build awareness about your brand and business.