Social Media Segments

Social Media, the often talked about and yet still very gray and fuzzy area.  Wikipedia defines Social Media as follows:

"Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It's a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one to many) into dialogs (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal, political and business use. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM)."

So, using wikipedia, a form of social media, to define social media.  Hmmmm...
This is a very broad definition and many things will fall underneath this definition. What should marketers do about social media?  The first step is to add some segmentation to the definition.

I would categorize social media into 3 areas:

1. Controlled Social Media: This is sponsored content within your own domain. This includes content that is sponsored by the company (site owner) such as interactive customer reviews on your own website, company blogs, etc.You can oversee and moderate this type of environment.
2. Sponsored Social Media: This is sponsored content outside your domain.  A company Facebook, Twitter page, YouTube channel, or a LinkedIn group are good examples.  You are in control of the messages in this segment of social media.
3. Viral Social Media: This is non-sponsored content outside your domain.  This is the category that keeps us all up at night--the comments and blog posts people are making about us  and the discussions that our customers are having about us  They are having them everywhere and we have no control over what is being said and what is being read.  We can try to monitor it, but we cannot control it.

The Controlled Social Media segment and the Sponsored Social Media segment are marketing driven.  Some efforts have been successful and although we have better ways to measure and manage these segments, many are still struggling to understand the value and impact these efforts have.

The Viral Social Media segment is out of our control.  Some have figured out how to monitor it and some have figured out how to count it.  But very few have figured out how to measure the impact it has and the value it provides us.

It is important as you move more down the social media path, you understand the difference between the three segments and adjust your plans, objectives and measurements to take into account all three segments.

Comments

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Social media is a phrase being tossed around a lot these days, but it can sometimes be difficult to answer the question of what is social media. If MySpace is a social media site, and Mag.nolia is a social media site, and Wikipedia is a social media site, then just what is social media?

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The best way to define social media is to break it down. Media is an instrument on communication, like a newspaper or a radio, so social media would be a social instrument of communication.

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Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings.The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.

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Mobile Marketing is the new face of Direct it encompasses the best of both worlds: Internet marketing's interactivity with traditional direct marketing's accountability and ability to track ROI. While many marketers tap mobile for brand-related advertising, most of them expect to generate leads from click-throughs, registrations, click to call and SMS text opt-ins for alerts and offers. Attend this day-long session to convince yourself that mobile is the new face of direct.

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But social news is not the same thing as social media anymore than a banana is the same thing as fruit. A banana is a type of fruit, but fruit can also be grapes, strawberries, or lemons. And while social news is social media, social networking and wikis are also social media.

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According to a recent study by Bain & Co., while India makes up just 0.4 percent of global luxury good sales, the market is growing at 25 percent a year. There are 1.5 million households in India who can afford luxury goods, compared with 1.6 million households in China, according to McKinsey.

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Social Media news blog covering cool new websites and social networks: Facebook, Google, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube.

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Mobile Marketing is the new face of Direct it encompasses the best of both worlds: Internet marketing's interactivity with traditional direct marketing's accountability and ability to track ROI.

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There are 1.5 million households in India who can afford luxury goods, compared with 1.6 million households in China, according to McKinsey.

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Helping webmasters, bloggers and businesses make the most of social media sites marketing - with in-depth analysis, original articles, resources guides.

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Social Media Optimization is the methodization of social media activity with the intent of attracting unique visitors to website content. SMO is one of two online methods of website optimization; the other method is search engine optimization or SEO.

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Social media are primarily Internet based and mobile tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings.The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, images, video and audio.

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The best way to define social media is to degrade. The media is a communication tool, like a newspaper or radio, the media what would be an instrument of social communication.

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Mobile Marketing is the new face of direct combining the best of both worlds: the interactivity of Internet marketing with traditional accountability of direct marketing and its ability to track ROI. While many vendors to tap mobile advertising related marks, most of them hope to generate leads from click-throughs, the records, click to call and SMS opt-ins for alerts and offers.

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Mobile Marketing is the new face of direct combining the best of both worlds: the interactivity of Internet marketing with traditional accountability of direct marketing and its ability to track ROI. While many vendors to tap mobile advertising related marks, most of them hope to generate leads from click-throughs, the records, click to call and SMS opt-ins for alerts and offers.

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Thanks for this information. You've done a great job. Thanks for highlighting this, keep up the good work.

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But the news is not the same social media to social rather than a banana is the same as fruit. A banana is a type of fruit, but fruit can also be grapes, strawberries, or lemons.

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Mobile Marketing is the new face of direct combining the best of both worlds: the interactivity of Internet marketing with traditional accountability of direct marketing and its ability to track ROI.

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A company Facebook, Twitter page, YouTube channel, or group of LinkedIn are good examples.

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While many vendors to tap mobile advertising related marks, most of them hope to generate leads from click-throughs, the records, click to call and SMS opt-ins for alerts and offers.