Social Media Marketing For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Introduction

On August 23, 1999, Blogger launched as one of the earliest dedicated blog-publishing tools. At that time, social media was considered a niche activity on the fringes of the Internet. But today, Blogger is owned by Google and hosts millions of blogs. In a span of ten years, Facebook has grown to more than one billion users, and Wikipedia has, for all practical purposes, replaced Britannica as an encyclopedia. Social media is the most important phenomenon transforming the Internet.

There is more to it than the phenomenon, though. Social media also presents unique marketing opportunities that force marketers to revisit the core guiding principles of marketing while providing new ways to reach social influencers, thereby encouraging people to influence each other and do the marketing for the brand. Social media marketing (SMM) forces companies to rethink how they market online, whom they market to, and how to structure their own organizations to support these new marketing opportunities. For anyone involved with social media marketing — and Internet marketing, more broadly — this is indeed an exciting time.

Social Media Marketing For Dummies, 3rd Edition, is written to help you make sense of the madness. Because it’s such a hot topic, the press and the experts alike are quick to frighten marketers like you and introduce new terminology that confuses rather than enlightens. This book cuts through all that noise and simply explains what social media marketing is and how ...