Social Media Optimization For Dummies

Introduction

Over the past several years, social media has come to dominate conversations about digital marketing. The rise of social media as an online influencer has been dramatic and has happened quite quickly. In traditional media, the concept of word of mouth has always been respected as one of the most influential forms of marketing. In the Internet age, word of mouth now happens online, via social media. When your friends recommend things, you listen. When they share and like things, you notice. The concepts are as old as marketing itself, but the tools are new.

Social media optimization — or SMO, as it's often called in this book — is a marketing discipline that focuses on creating effective social media. This book starts with the assumption that you're already onboard with the idea of social media, but now you want to find out how to work with social media better, faster, and more effectively. Over the course of these pages, we share with you our experiences in managing social media, and try to communicate the lessons we've learned and explain the tools we've used. The goal of this book is to help you build a social media practice that gets results and doesn't make you nuts in the process.

The one given that you have to keep in mind is that social media is a fast-changing, fluid area. New tools will arise. New channels will take on importance. Books, by contrast, are largely static things. After you read this book, the burden is on you to make an attempt to stay abreast ...