University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Social Media Marketing
Book

Social Media Marketing

An Hour a Day

Dave Evans
Sybex, 2008
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

The “Social Web” – the weave of “Social Media” Internet sites – is the dominant environment favored by many young consumers, the place where they connect with one another. Contemporary marketing requires having a robust presence on the social Web, but its array of media choices can be confounding. The sites’ obscure names – Ning, Ping, Pluck, Plurk, Bebo, Orkut, Plaxo, Minggl – reveal little, and they seem distinctly unwelcoming to overt marketing and advertising. That means your company must handle its online promotion according to the social Web’s accepted customs and protocols. Plus, your program must have panache to engage network members. To promote effectively via the social Web, you need a knowledgeable guidebook. getAbstract recommends this hands-on manual by social media marketing whiz Dave Evans. He expertly deciphers the social Web, and explains how to plan and implement a social media marketing campaign with a practical one-hour-a-day schedule. He even details what social Web marketers must not do. That’s a handy thing to know in the online jungle, where this insightful book can help you penetrate the social media marketing maze.

Summary

The “Social Web”

Learning about “Social Media” and developing a marketing plan to exploit online social networks, tools and applications can be a challenge for marketers. The field is new, and it offers very diverse promotional options and capabilities. Additionally, a social media promotional plan must incorporate a new, counterintuitive marketing logic: You should not organize your marketing to generate impressions among audience members. They will see such tactics as interruptions.

Instead, work to influence the social Web’s citizens or “netizens” positively and convincingly. Then, theoretically, they will sway other people online in a felicitous cascade of word-of-mouth marketing. That’s the social network effect, which leads to another big challenge: failure to handle online marketing correctly can backfire easily. Any negative consequences will almost certainly go viral, so a flawed social media marketing program can work against your company and your product.

You have to get it right – and remaining passively on the sideline isn’t really an option. Your company’s lack of a social media presence is a negative statement in itself. People in online networks...

About the Author

Dave Evans formerly worked on NASA’s Voyager deep space exploration program. He founded Digital Voodoo consulting, has a column on ClickZ, and sits on advisory boards for the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and ad:tech.

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