Making Sense of SMM (Social Media Marketing)

on Aug 17, 2009

Everyone is talking about ‘Social Media’ these days. SMM is the buzzword in the town. Media is riding on the ‘Social Media’ boom to catch the eyeballs. Yet, most of us are grappling to leverage the ‘true’ value of Social Media Marketing. Isn’t that expected? Today, SMM is going through the journey, which SEO (Search Engine Optimization) traveled around 10 years back and PPC (Pay Per Click) sailed through around 6 years ago. ‘Timing’ in my view is the real opportunity behind SMM. Sooner or later, most of the mysteries (including measurability ) around Social Media Marketing are going to be solved - many through tools and others through knowledge sharing. Don’t you want to turn this ‘timing’ (unfair - the way many who’ll be left behind will describe it later) advantage on your side? ‘Yes’ is the obvious answer but do you have the wherewithal to create Social Media success for your business? More importantly, do you have the patience and willingness to learn & experiment with this amazing medium? Over the last couple of months, after working (and still a long way to go) with various customers (thanks to them for trusting us) across different verticals, we’ve gained (and still learning) some meaningful insights, which today gives us the confidence to evaluate, strategize, plan and execute Social Media Marketing success for us and our esteemed customers. I’ve captured our learnings and insights in the form of presentation shared below. This presentation essentially encapsulates the framework, which is the context inside of which we think, plan and execute Social Media Campaigns today. Two of the examples of successful implementations of the discussed Social Media Marketing framework - Commonwealth Games 2010 community and Cricket World Cup 2011 Community on Facebook. Also, for those of you who are serious about building community on Social Media, you should check out "Demystifying Community Building on Social Media (Facebook)" presentation and join us for continuous learning at Social Media Community Building Page at Facebook. I am sure that in due course as we learn and adapt to the fast changing Social World on the Internet, we’ll need to come up with another face to this framework. Your contribution in the form of sharing your experiences, asking questions and agreeing/ disagreeing to our thinking will be highly appreciated. That’s the only way you and we can expect to run faster than rest of the Social world.