Link List

On Social Media Marketing.com, they go over a list of links of blog entries found on other sites. They compile the best of the week. This is a great compilation. Here's what I learned:

In the article, "What drives participation in a social network?" That answer is to feel validation. But the question you need to ask yourself is, what equals validation for your participation in SMM? Is it number of views, remarks, or likes? Knowing what is your validation for each type of SMM, you may better know how to track efficiency.

In the article, "Why It's Time to Hit the Reset Button on Trust" talks about how we sometimes blindly trust information posted in blogs and social media. We even repost it thinking it's fact without fact checking. We believe so many of our "friends" to be experts. Trust needs to be rethought.

From the article, "Language Translation and Social Media" I learned a new term for something I knew about for a long time. It's called Crowdsourcing. The idea has been around for a while and has even been used locally with places like the Paramount or even the Bookstore. The idea is to utilize the fan base to create content or other media for the support of the company. This is simply cheap advertising and it grows a sense of pride from the featured artist. It will still cost a bit, but most likely it's a great investment.

This is one amazing slide show. Just studying this would take a good week at least maybe even more:

Social Media Charts

In this last article, "Is location where it’s at in social networking?" I learned about location based technology in advertising. In other words, a company can send people ads, just because the person is standing in front of a library or other place. Some professors think it's a great idea, but they feel it may just die out quickly. Who knows what's in store for the future.

Like I said. This is an ever growing industry and hard to keep up. So much to read, so little time.

Personal Strategy Project Proposal

So our assignment was simply this:

Select Industry and two companies within industry to track and research. Determine what you could do to better yourself to be marketable to that industry/company. Put together a weekly plan.

Simple right? WRONG! My mind went to so many industries, but settled on marketing. I am studying marketing and specifically web marketing. Now finding a new brand in web marketing call "Social Media Marketing". SMM means you use more viral tactics to further your marketing power and brand awareness. I did a search to see which companies out there actually did this as a main part of their work. I found a "Top 10" list and have chosen the top two.

IntraPromote

SocialMediaMarketing.com

Like most of the companies in their industry, they are privately run, though they could be incorporated, so they won't show up on the NYSE or NASDAQ. But on a good note, they do show themselves prominently on their own blogs and post frequently to twitter and facebook.

First step for keeping up to date with these companies and the industry in general is to subscribe first to these companies' blogs and twitter feeds. Many companies have a weekly newsletter about SEO and SMM. I don;t think I will stop at just these two companies for that. Also in the comping weeks I will try to contact anyone in these companies to get a better feel for what it takes to be good at SMM. Contacted them through Linkedin.com and maybe even facebook.

Reading those article, tweets, blog entries and newsletters will keep me plenty busy, especially with an ever growing and changing marketing world.