Avoiding Pitfalls

SMM or Social Media Marketing is about using our existing skills and expertise, to develop social media skills, to leverage the Social Web to promote and market our products and services.

Marketing has its roots in word-of-mouth conversations that have connected buyers and sellers for thousands of years. Now many of us call ourselves Professional Marketers. One's reputation has always been built on experience. With the introduction of modern advertising, mass communications, and public relations, the individual conversations that drove the sales cycle were all but buried. The Marketers gained control over the message with every professionally created tag-line, PowerPoint slide deck, and ad. As one-way mass communication grew, so did the Marketers control.

Now the pendulum is swinging back; individual voices are once again being heard and asserting their primal value. The voices have taken on a new roll by creating collective conversations expressed on the internet. The social Web - Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, or social networks, along with blogs and conversational communities such as Seesmic and Twitter - is bring the consumers voice into the collective conversation in a big way, and those voices are being heard. As a result, some Chief Marketing Officers now find themselves in a tough spot. Markets, at all levels, not only need to deal with the fragmentation and new landscapes in traditional marketing channels, but they are now looking at the takeover of the brand communications by consumers as they restate, remix, and publish how they, themselves, see the brand and product. When they agree and boost your message, it is the wonderful, but if they do not, things look bad real fast.

Building on the individual freedom and empowerment that the Internet is known for, consumers are actively talking online with each other, to share stories and information about anything and everything from toys and tools to food and drink. As they do so, they are amplifying and reinforcing marketing efforts or beating marketers at their own game by simply sharing their experiences and thoughts with each other. Because customers are more likely to trust conversations between themselves more than any form of advertising, marketers are now faced with the advertising message being routinely held up for verification in online communities where they or their PR and ad agencies have a very small amount of control, if any. For the marketers and agencies who are very much used to control - this is a game changer.

This series of training is about teaching the skills needed to properly use the Social Web to your marketing and business advantage, and how to join in and participate as a marketer, by incorporating the underlying behaviors that drive the Social Web, enabling you to make marketing and business plans. t's about giving up control - you can not control social conversations - while asserting influence by becoming a respected member of those communities that matter most to you. This training will impress upon you, the importance of the connection between participation and influence, and help you see what is on the horizon. You will see many examples of trends and best practices all laid out and the motivation to create winning plans.

This editorial is part of the Commanding The Social Web article series, available to the community, at no cost, and can be easily found on the World wide web. I know you will want to find and read the whole series, to capture the triumph that can be yours from your interaction with the web community. You will be choreographing your own success on the Social Web.

Read more: http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/Avoiding-Pitfalls-Of-Social-Media-Marketing----Flourishing--Social-Media-Marketing-Comunities/1201674#ixzz0pczxRNjP
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