What is social media? It’s a simple question, but many people don’t know the answer. According to Wikipedia, social media: is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies; it’s a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one to many) into dialogues (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers.  Basically, it’s a communication tool via the internet.

When some people think of social media they think of Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. However, social media is much bigger and wider than the main social media sites. The beauty of social media is that you can create niche social communities online about whatever topics or industries you choose. There’s a wide range of social media sites out there from healthcare and real estate to fashion and shopping. Simply put, if you’ve thought about it, there’s probably a social media community that you could join. Even better, if no one has started a social media site about your hobby or passion, you can start one and find other people who share your enthusiasm. For example, there’s a site called “Care 2”, which encourages people to make a difference on the issues they care about, whether it’s helping the poor or animal welfare. They encourage the people in their social community to make the difference and connect with other people who want to make a difference.

Social media includes many different topics and issues. In fact, it seems to have no limits. It’s like space; there are always new frontiers to explore. The next time you think of social media, don’t just limit yourself to thinking of teenage friends socializing online. Remember that social media spans many ages and covers many topics. Get out there and socialize, you may be surprised at what you find.

Facebook already offers behavioral targeting which allows advertisers to reach visitors based on interests. Advertisers can also target visitors by demographics. For example, marketers can target females between the ages of 25-34 with college degrees that are interested in travel.

Slowly, Facebook has been enhancing its targeting features. With the recent release of ad scheduling and ad editing, advertising on Facebook is becoming more appealing.  Last week, Facebook announced even more features to enhance targeting. First and perhaps most interesting is connection targeting. With connection targeting, advertisers have the ability to only reach fans of any of their pages, users of any of their applications, members of any of their groups, or attendees of any of their events, which can help solidify brand loyalty with the right messaging.

Another feature update is the ability to advertise in multiple countries. In the past, if you wanted to target different countries, you would need to create a new campaign. Now, advertisers have the options to add up to 25 different countries per campaign. Ad delivery is based on IP address.

Birthday targeting is another feature that was recently released. The ability to capture this specific audience sounds insignificant, but can be very powerful. Remember, by creating very specific ad copy messaging, you can reach an exact audience. Who wouldn’t click on an ad that says, “Happy Birthday to you. Click here and save 10% on your purchase for your birthday”?

With each rollout of enhancements from Facebook, advertisers have more opportunities to better target their audience. Combined with specific ad copy, advertisers can reach a highly qualified and engaged audience.

Social Media is a necessary part of any company’s online marketing strategy.  Businesses just starting to investigate social media have to determine what social media channels fit best.  Each channel requires a different amount of invested time to manage and promote.  Also, some social media channels cater to certain types of demographics and types of content.  Audience can vary greatly depending on the channel.  In order to help you through the process of learning what channels fit, read below, as it will offer some high level perspective in selecting which channels might make the most sense for your organization.

Facebook-Has a very impressive amount of users-over 250 million users monthly.  2/3 of those users are out of college, and the fastest growing demographic currently is females over 55. Average incomes among FaceBookers are: 25% at 30k-60K, 29% 60k-100k, and 29% 100k+.  FaceBook’s audience is worldwide, with 50 supported translated languages.  About 75 million users are in the United States, and 175 million users are logging in internationally. If you want to reach the widest amount of users, with all kinds of interests, ages and professions, this channel is definitely the place to be.  FaceBook does require a person being in charge of updating the page often, and responding to inquiries.  Typically, this channel would need 2-3 hours weekly to promote, update, and respond to inquiries for a small to midsize business.  To make the channel more engaging, having collateral such as pictures and videos are great.  If you have a web developer, creating widgets & applications is a definite plus, but not necessary. 

Myspace-Has around 120 million users, of which 62 million are in the United States.  Over the past year or so, MySpace has been losing ground to FaceBook.  While this channel still has a very large audience, it is much younger overall, so products geared to tweens, teens, and young adults will have more success in this channel.  6% of users are 18-34 and 27% of users are 12-17 years of age.  MySpace has about 14% more females than males, and 56% of users have no college background, while the other 44% have some college, or graduate college.   The average incomes are spread pretty evenly, with 22% making under 30k, 27% making 30k-60k, and 26% making 60k-100k.  This channel also requires 2-3 hours weekly to promote, update and respond to inquiries for small to mid-size business.  Marketing collateral such as pictures and videos are wonderful ways to enhance user engagement in this channel.  

Twitter-Has about 27 million users, and is one of the fastest growing social media sites.  45% of users are male.  There are about as many users with a college degree as those having not attended college.  43% of users are 18-34, where 31% are 35-49, and 19% are 50+.  Average incomes in Twitter are 29% 30k-60k, 25% 60k-100k, and 26% making 100k+.  The Twitter platform is very different when compared to FaceBook or MySpace.  Twitter is a micro blogging site, and requires constant updating, pretty much all day long, so having dedicated resources to this channel is a must!  Pictures and Video content for Twitter aren’t really ideal, as this is a site all about sharing text content quickly. Twitter has been popular among news media since spreading information through Twitter is instantaneous.  If you have information you want to share quickly, this is a great resource to use to reach your audience.

YouTube-Has about 550 million visits each month, with 72.5 million users logging in.  A lot of YouTube visits aren’t found on YouTube’s own website. Instead people find videos in Google search results, or videos uploaded to websites from Google.  YouTube claims visitors are 50% female/50% male. 52% of users either have college education, or completed graduate school, while 48% haven’t attended college.  Statistics seem pretty even all the way around; even average incomes are spread very evenly.  YouTube is a very powerful social media channel, but serves a very specific purpose: video content.  This channel is great for someone who has video assets at their disposal, and/or has plans to start creating video content.  This channel can be more expensive and time consuming, since video production time is both expensive and takes time; that is unless the company is already producing video content.  In those situations just uploading existing content them to this channel would certainly be ideal if you want to get your videos in front of as many people as possible.

It seems everywhere you go, people are talking about Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.  Many companies have created profiles on these various social media networks, but very few know how to use these platforms to their advantage. 

One way for a company to take advantage of social media is to listen to the feedback they are receiving from their friends, fans and followers.  It is very important to monitor your page, but not hide or delete unfavorable posts.  Internet users are savvy and can tell a page is being censored if every post is a glowing review. By allowing customers to post their experiences, either good or bad, it allows other customers to see how your company handles unfavorable situations and ultimately can fortify relationships with loyal consumers.

Companies should always be honest about a bad experience and immediately claim responsibility.  Liana Evans of Search Engine Watch says, ‘Being humble, accepting the bad, and saying “I’m sorry” when bad things happen to your customers are some of the best actions companies can take when dealing with potentially negative situations in social media.’

By reviewing the posts made on your profile, not only can you protect your reputation, but you can also use these critiques to learn about areas of needed improvement.  Many companies may not even be aware that certain policies or services related experiences need attention.

Let’s face it, when it comes to running a business, the occasional bad experience is inevitable, but it’s how the situation is handled that can make all the difference.  Social media platforms are an extremely popular way for customers to unite and share information.  By habitually posting new information and responses to your social media profile or page, you can keep your followers updated and renew confidence in your brand.

Facebook’s recent enhancements to targeting options make it easier than ever to get in front of your core demographic.  Suppose you are managing paid search efforts and want to target females logged into Facebook between the ages of 28-35, who are married, live in South Florida, are “Fans” of Kohl’s and Target, like the TV Show “Lost”, listen to “Dave Matthews Band”, and work at MoreVisibility.  OK, so maybe that’s limiting your impressions significantly but it can be done with Facebook’s targeting options!  As you are creating your ad and testing different selects, Facebook actually provides an estimated number of eyeballs that will see your ads. 

Facebook estimated audience A

Facebook estimated audience B

Even better….you will be reaching a super-clean segment.  Considering that consumers are using Facebook to connect with family, co-workers, and friends, there is no motive to be ambiguous when a completing profile.  After all, don’t you want to be sure people find the REAL you when combing through the sea of profiles on Facebook?

For anyone out there who has not tested the waters of Facebook Ads, here is a run down of the targeting options available:

• Age
• Gender
• Geography (Country, State, City, City + radius)
• Keywords (User Profile fields for Interests, TV Shows, Movies, Authors)
• Education (College Grad, In College, High School, etc)
• Target by College / University Name and Major

The recent enhancement that I fell in love with is “Suggested Keywords”.  Suggested keywords are generated when utilizing the keyword field to target users.  For example, entering “lost” into the keyword field prompts the following suggestions:

• Dharma Initiative
• The 4400
• Josh Holloway

These additional suggestions are pulled from common terms that exist among Profiles who have an interest in “Lost”.  Suggestions will only be provided for keywords that have established a higher volume among Facebook profiles.  These keywords should be included in your ad’s targeting in order to reach additional users with a (similar) interest to your core audience.  Facebook’s keyword suggestions can also be extremely valuable in uncovering keywords to include in other PPC / Paid Search efforts.

It happens more times than you’d care to know; an employee posts raunchy pictures of their weekend debauchery for all of their Facebook friends to see. So why does this matter to you as an employer? Simple… Because it is becoming more and more common for employees to be linked with clients on their Social Media channels.

Several large organizations have paved the way in establishing strict online guidelines for employees to follow. A few of these companies have even made these details public: Cisco, IBM, Intel. Companies aren’t taking this stand to bully their employees or tell them they can not use Facebook or Twitter, but rather to use good judgment when there is an overlap with their professional and personal contacts.

If a formal policy is not the right fit for your organization, you can encourage employees to create a separate account for their business and networking relationships. This way they can tailor all their content in a way that will best represent their professional goals, while at the same time representing their employer in a positive light.

As an employer it is important to remember not only how Social Media can work for you, but also of all the ways it can work against you as well.

A friend of mine was recently looking for a new workout routine. She went to Google and typed in the phrase leg workout video. The very first organic result was a YouTube video which she found to be very useful. She particularly enjoyed the user reviews written about the video and even wrote one of her own. As she was sharing this information with me, I found it interesting (but not at all a surprise) that the video ranked #1; higher than any other natural search results. Google’s Universal Search, which was first rolled out in 2007, displays not only website results, but also videos, images, etc. Basically, if a video is properly tagged with relevant keywords, there is a good chance the video will trump an organic website result.

Another friend of mine is getting ready to take a cruise vacation with her family. She also went online, but chose Yahoo to research shore excursions. She discovered a travel forum where fellow vacationers’ were blogging about their travel experiences. Before she knew it, she had been online for over an hour, collaborating with people on the travel forum. She gained helpful insights that will save her both time and money and promised to write about her own travel experience.

Both of the above examples prove the fact that even if you think you’re not a social media user, the fact is that in one way or another, you probably are. You don’t need a Facebook page, nor have followers on Twitter to engage in Social Media. Social Media, defined by wikipedia as online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies, is being used by almost everyone, in one way or another. Collaborative content is all over the internet and even if you aren’t looking, you will find it or rather, it will find you!

Many companies are afraid to delve into the brave new world of social media. A major reason for concern is that consumers can speak their minds and have their opinions heard by a larger audience than ever before. For most companies, this can be a great thing. Your consumers are actively engaged in your brand and are speaking out about it. However, the fear arises when the conversations are not positive. What do you do when your consumers are giving not so great feedback on your company? Do you just ignore it and hope it goes away?

The answer to that is a simple, no. Your audience is going to be on different social channels, whether it is Facebook, Twitter, blogs or forums, giving their opinions. For good or bad, it is necessary to have a presence on the social media channels.

We all know that every company will experience some negative word of mouth comments.  If a company discovers that a customer is unhappy, they should reach out to the person to rectify the situation, turning a negative experience into a positive one. Social media channels are the ideal place to do that. Once that person is satisfied or the audience knows you have reached out to do the right thing, you will not only recover from the negative publicity, you have also gained positive publicity. Leveraging social media can not only overcome bad publicity, it can also fortify strong relationships with your loyal consumers.