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Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Social media marketing: Facebook & Twitter aren’t enough











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Guest post by Rand Fishkin

Founder & CEO, SEOmoz



randfishFacebook has had an incredible run for the last six years — see the graphic above. Twitter has had a remarkable four years under its belt, now reaching 200 million members.



The growth of these twin networks has brought new discipline to the practice of traffic generation, branding and customer engagement on the Web: social media marketing. But for those of us who participate in the practice, there are clear signs that Twitter and Facebook aren’t enough.



Plenty of recent facts and figures have helped to hammer this point home:



The long tail of social media packs a punch


If your job includes the monitoring, management and/or promotion of a company’s brand through social media, I’d strongly urge you to consider educating yourself about and participating in all the platforms that might matter to your company. The following are my personal recommendations for the average social media marketer to consider, grouped by users:



100 million+ users



25 million+ users



10 million+ users



Up-and-comers



There are dozens, possibly hundreds of others sites worthy of your attention as a social marketer (and possibly helpful to those focused on social as a channel for SEO opportunity). So, please, let’s be cautious about an overly narrow definition of social media marketing – your clients/managers/bottom line will thank you.



As a startup guy and technologist, I’m excited to see even more sites enter the social media playing field in 2011. Unlike search, where Google has a near-monopoly worldwide (excluding China, Russia, North Korea and the Czech Republic), social media offers a myriad of unique platforms for opportunity.



Do you have a favorite social media site? Have we overlooked an up-and-comer? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.



* I’m a fan of Quora, but this quote made me gag a bit: “Cheever dismisses the notion that there is a direct competitor for Quora.” Hubris, I understand, but blatant disregard for the truth is unbecoming.

Rand Fishkin is the CEO & co-founder of SEOmoz. This post originally appeared at SEOmoz and is repub lished with per mis sion. SEO moz is not affil i ated with Socialmedia.biz and has not reviewed this trans la tion. SEO moz pro vides the Web’s best SEO tools and resources.



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