Social media is the unquestioned “hot topic” amongst marketers right now. Facebook is exploding in the 35-54 year-old demographic (us Gen Xers are reconnecting with our long-lost high school friends), Twitter is becoming mainstream, and social media is the medium that can deliver massive returns with minor investments. 

Social media “experts” are popping up left and right. Some truly are. Check out the Twitter following of these marketing influencers: 

Chris Brogan: @chrisbrogan
Ann Handley: @MarketingProfs
Our own Brandon Zeuner: @bzkicks 

Many of our consultants have been asking about social media, but aren’t quite ready to use it for themselves or their clients. We’re just starting ourselves, but learning quickly and working on new social media exercises and best practices to add to our upcoming v3.0 release. These will cover the basics for using the different categories of sites: 

• Networking
• Micro blogging
• Blogging
• Bookmarking
• Story submission
• Collaborative research
• Video sharing
• Photo sharing
• Music sharing
• Document sharing
• Content creation

If you want in-depth social media guides, just check the web. Here are a few great introductory free social media resources to get you started: 

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

• Social media & business marketing by HubSpot, on Slideshare
• The Essential Guide to Social Media free ebook by Brian Solis
• 7 ways to be worth following on Twitter by TwiTip

 Related articles by Zemanta

• When Can We Start To Say “Expert?” (davefleet.com)
• Steve Woodruff: The Strategic Serendipity of Social Media (mpdailyfix.com)

Tags: social media, Twitter

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 6:40 pm and is filed under Marketing Strategies and Tactics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.