Social Media Marketing For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Taking Care of the Unpaid Media Basics

No marketing effort on the niche platforms is complete if you ignore all the possibilities on the unpaid side of the equation too. The social platforms, which depend on advertising as revenue, may not always be keen for you to deploy these tactics.

In the following sections, we discuss some tactics to consider in the unpaid realm.

These platforms afford the opportunity, and as long as you’re not disrupting the platforms, breaking any privacy rules, or irritating the users on them, these tactics are fair game.

Wikipedia

You should always research how your company or brand is represented on Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org ), which is the free encyclopedia that anybody can edit. When you do find your company page, don’t pepper it with marketing-speak. The page will just be reedited to the original version. Instead, read the page carefully and correct any misrepresentations. Shy away from promoting your company or products. Instead, point to complimentary articles. In fact, most social media professionals believe that you should never edit your own Wikipedia page because it may be considered a clear conflict of interest. Those professionals encourage brands to only comment on the discussion tab.

Flickr

This Flickr photo sharing website (www.flickr.com ), shown in Figure 13-3, is starting to act and feel more and more like a social network. You’ll ...