Social Media Marketing Basics
This is a much longer post than usual, however, recent prospects still don’t quite understand the basics and I thought it was important for my VA connections…enjoy!
The Internet provides an incredible opportunity for businesses to reach their target audiences in a wide variety of ways. One of the growing areas of Internet marketing is the use of social media and social networks to connect with consumers or business-to-business clients. However, the language of social media can be confusing for the inexperienced. To better understand the uses and benefits of social media marketing, here are some common terms used in the social media genre.
- Aggregator or Newsfeeder—software that gathers and organizes content from blogs or other social networking platforms through their RSS feeds, and displays the content in one central location.
- Blogs—also called "web logs", they are an integral part of your social media presence. These sites allow companies or individuals to create a journal organized into reverse chronological order. This type of social media can have many interactive features, such as allowing comments from visitors, RSS feeds, and widgets. To obtain the best results in overall search engine optimization for your static website, linking a blog back to your website creates a favorable connection as it relates to your SEO.
- Blog Marketing—using a web log to communicate business news, announcements, and company or business profiles.
- Blogosphere—refers to all the blogs and blog interactions on the Web.
- Content—refers to the material on any website, including social media sites and blogs, which can be text, pictures, video, or audio material.
- Feeds or RSS Feeds—programs used by social networking sites to provide their subscribers with a simple way to obtain any new material without visiting the actual site. These feeds are usually channeled into an aggregator, which organizes and displays them for the subscriber. This process helps you to stay connected to clients and prospects.
- Forums—usually in a bulletin board format, these sites allow members to interact by posting messages related to a specific topic or industry.
- Groups—individuals or companies with some common interest or activity gathering together for online discussions, often utilizing email systems to disperse their messages or posts.
- Lurkers—refers to people who may visit a social media site, but do not contribute through comments or postings.
- Microblogging—social networking on a smaller scale, usually with posting size restrictions, the most popular example being Twitter, where posts are a maximum of 140-characters.
- Podcast—audio or video content that subscribers can receive automatically, like a feed.
- Profiles—information in the form of text, picture, and even audio or visual files provided by an individual or company when becoming a member of a social networking site. These offer prospect’s an inside look at who you are and why they want to get to know you.
- Social media—this is the term for the platforms and tools that individuals or companies use to display content and interact online. This includes blogs, podcasts, groups, forums, networking sites, wikis, etc.
- Social Media Marketing—using online social networking sites to promote a company’s service or products.
- Social networks—these are sites where individuals use the network platform to interact and connect with others through their profile, sharing content, messaging, feeds, and other social media tools.
- Threads—refers to messages or posts under a single forum topic, or to the comments and trackbacks of blogs.
- Trackback—ability to leave a link on a blog to a related blog post or comment on a different blog.
- Viral Marketing—refers to spreading awareness of a product or service from one consumer to another through the social media platforms.
- Widgets—short strands of code embedded in a site that perform specific functions, like news feeds or donation buttons.
- Wiki—web pages that can be edited by a group of people who have permission to do so from the page owner.
With a basic understanding of social media terms, companies will be able to utilize marketing techniques in the social media arena. Social media marketing offers a whole new platform to connecting to your target audience, opening up a world of opportunity for any business.
Have I missed any definitions; do you have questions about social media that I may not have addressed? Please feel free to leave your comments or questions below, I’m happy to help if I can . 
Jeannine Clontz, owner of Accurate Business Services, a VA practice, is an author, writer, speaker and VA Business Coach specializing in providing professional business coaching to established and start-up virtual assistants (VA’s). For her FREE audio CD “What’s Holding Back my Business Success?”, a 2-month trial in her Insider group coachingprogram, or 1-month trial of her coaching club visit: http://www.VAbizcoach.com; or contact her at: coach@VAbizcoach.com.
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