Social Media Marketing For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 2

Discovering Your SMM Competitors

In This Chapter

Researching consumer online activity

Tracking your competition

Creating personas to sharpen your marketing

Recognizing new SMM concepts

Which consumers are using the social web is no longer a subject of much debate. Rather, the debate has shifted to how consumers are using the social web. How many teens are using Facebook actively, what is the true reach of Twitter, and how much are Instagram and Tumblr growing? These are the more common questions today. What’s certain is that no one questions the scale or influence of the social web on culture, communications, and people’s lives around the world.

The truth is that it’s difficult to say who is using the social web and how. This is because the term social web is most commonly used to describe how people socialize and interact with each other across the web. With every passing day, many websites are becoming social platforms where visitors can interact and learn from one another. Even more critically, more and more websites allow you to log in with your Facebook or Twitter ...