Social Media 101
We frequently hear: “I have no idea how to use social media” or even more often, “I just don’t get Twitter.” The Social Media 101 is a simple and quick guide to getting started with social media.
Social Media 101
Social media, when used correctly, can provide an environment for creating relationships, gaining insight from direct interactions and building awareness with a group of users that can, and probably already are, influencing your market.
Social media marketing is simply the process of using these new communication tools developed for the social media landscape to interact with people and in the process, generate exposure and learn what is going on in the marketplace.
Adding Social Media to Your Marketing Mix
Social media does not replace traditional marketing – it is just added to the marketing mix. Social media tools are an element or a tactic - part of a marketing plan, which hopefully is fed by a marketing strategy.
Social media has some very different characteristics from traditional marketing (online and offline):
| Traditional Marketing | Social Media | |
| Communication | Mostly one way – outbound | Two way |
| Messaging | Carefully crafted | Free form, information sharing |
| Largest portion of cost | Money | Time |
| Target | Demographic groups | Individuals |
| Time frames | Campaign focused | Continual |
| Goal | Impressions, conversions | Relationships, trusted advisor status, subject matter expert |
