Stephanie Diamond

Social media marketing is a technique that employs social media (content created by everyday people using highly accessible and scalable technologies such as blogs, message boards, podcasts, microblogs, bookmarks, social networks, communities, wikis, and vlogs).

Marketers: They share content online to achieve an organization’s marketing and business needs. Today’s marketer looks nothing like the marketers of the twentieth century. Customers now own the brand conversation. The opportunity to interrupt and annoy has dwindled. Customers now meet businesses on their own terms.

Influencers: Several types of influencers contribute to the decisions customers make. They may be everyday people who influence the consumer as he makes a purchasing decision. Depending on the decision, the social influencers may be a wife (or husband), friends, peers at work, or even someone the consumer has never even met in real life. Simply put, the people who influence a brand affinity and purchasing decision are the social influencers. They may do this directly by rating products and commenting or by publishing opinions and participating in conversations across the web. Anyone can be a social influencer, influencing someone else’s brand affinity and purchasing decisions, and you, the reader, are probably one, too, without realizing it.

It isn’t enough to market to the consumer anymore; as a marketer, you have to market to your potential customers’ social influencers as well so that they in turn influence either overtly or just by what they publish and share online. And that’s what social media marketing is about.

Become the top persuader.

Utilize a variety of distribution channels.

Reinvent your strategy to emphasize value.

Create and curate content.

Know when to resist the next shiny object.

Considering the types of influencers