If you are a website administrator you may only just be coming to grips with the ins and outs of search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) and now you are faced with a whole new set of acronyms and computer geek jargon.

Blogging, wikis, tweets, mashup, pings, digg it… the list goes on.

Social media, sometimes called ‘user-generated content’ has helped to turn anybody with enough time on their hands into a publisher, journalist, video producer, actor, photographer, entertainer…

It is wonderful – somewhat suddenly, the tools that were only available to those with lots of money (generally businesses) became available to anyone with access to a computer and an internet connection.  And the GenY and Gen Zs took to it like a duck to water.

Of course like all good things that start out of somebody’s garage or dorm room as a bit of fun, they soon draw the attention of venture capitalists, and it is only a matter of time before users start to see ads for Russian brides, weight loss or other supposedly targeted offers whenever they visit the site.

Businesses and organisations in NZ are typically behind those in the US when it comes to marketing themselves online.

What exactly is social media?
Below is a great video from commoncraft that is aptly called ‘Social Media in Plain English’

The two tenants of online social marketing: SMM and SMO

1. Social Media Marketing (SMM)

SMM involves the “creation and distribution of content and other messages through the social web by some form of viral marketing”.

For example:
- participating in online communities where your customers, or the the case of the not-for-profit, your supporters hang out
- spreading a viral video by putting it on YouTube
- creating a ‘Cause’ on Facebook

These are things that are created ‘off-site’, i.e. not on your company or organisation’s website.

2. Social Media Optimisation (SMO)

SMO happens on your site. Embedding a YouTube video on your site would be a tactic of SMO. SMO came out of SEO (Search Engine Optimisaton), a technique which also involves work on your site so it will drive qualified traffic to your site from search engines.

For more on SMO visit the Hot PJ blog post on social media optimisation.

Like SEO, both Social Media Optimisation and Social Media Marketing, will spawn a whole new knowledge-based industry, where people are actually paid to waste time on Facebook, Twitter, LInked in – a bit like Mark at Hot PJ!

Selecting your target social media channel

In order to select the right tools to use in any social media marketing strategy it is important to know the demographics. There is no point wasting resources setting up a campaign in Facebook if it is not going to be seen by your demographic – those that fit the profile of your target audience.

It is also important to look at the origins of the social media site, its business model, and any issues surrounding its use that can and do attract bad press. For instance, Facebook has been under pressure for allowing holocaust deniers to use it’s services to ‘spread hatred’, contrary to Facebook’s own service terms, which state that users may not “post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.” Facebook has also been criticised for hosting ‘anti-gypsy’ and ‘white-pride’ groups on their site.

It is often hard to anticipate how users will react to material posted on a site. Not everyone is going to love what you do and social media makes it easy for them amplify their opinion! Make sure you have a plan for how to deal with bad social press as well as the good.

Posted on May 18th, 2009 by Wendy Riley-Biddle
Filed under: Marketing, Social Media for Not-for-Profits