Welcome to The Beginner's Guide to Social Media!
The prevalence and importance of social media to web marketing can't be overstated. To quote a few statistics from the guide itself, 72% of online adults use social networking sites, and YouTube now reaches more U.S. adults aged 18-34 than any cable network. With that kind of traffic, it's no wonder marketers now use these networks to interact with their customers, and there's plenty more data to prove it. Google searches for "social media" have seen a steady rise since early 2009:
Data from this year's industry survey tell a similar story. In 2012, nearly 20% of respondents reported not using any social media tools; this year, that number was down to 11%. On top of that, 63% of respondents indicated that their demand for social media marketing has increased over the last year. Whether you've been in on the game from the very beginning or are just starting to wonder how social tools can apply to your own professional life, this guide was created to help take you to the next level. Click below to dive in, or keep reading for more details!
What's inside
There's something for everyone in here, from the fundamentals of how social media is used to details about individual platforms and overarching best practices. Here's a list of the chapters you'll find in the guide:
The first section of the guide talks about social media in general, offering a plethora of best practices, a clear sense of the value of social media, ways you can measure your success in this endeavor, and recommendations on how to get started. From there, we dive into individual sites, slicing and dicing each of the major social media platforms and offering a consistent set of topics about each.
Here's a run-through of what you'll find:
Key stats and demographics
How many people are using these networks, and what kinds of people are they? When it comes to figuring out which social networks are right for you to use, it helps to know who you might be able to reach by developing a presence. This section is designed to give you the who, what, where, and when of each platform. You'll find infographics with statistics as well as some more general info.
How are people using the platform?
While the previous section covers who, what, where and when, this one covers the how and why of each platform. With uses ranging from establishing thought leadership to building customer advocates, this section (complete with innovative pro-tips) will give you a clearer picture of why you might want to choose one platform over another.
Strategies and tactics for success
Okay; you've decided to dive in. Success comes in different ways for different platforms, though, so how do you maximize your chances of seeing early results? This section is all about starting you in the right direction, making sure you can learn from the mistakes of everyone who came before you instead of from your own.
What success looks like
Many people learn better when they can see a great example of what they're going for, and while there's certainly no "best" way of going about your presence on any particular network, there's a great deal you can learn by examining some of the biggest success stories for each network. The sites listed in this section are all continuously finding new and innovative practices, so checking back in on them once in a while will help keep you up-to-date.
Etiquette tips and guidelines
At their hearts, all of these networks are really just tools to facilitate different kinds of social interactions. For that reason, there exists an unwritten code of etiquette for each. Most of this code mirrors basic human etiquette, but in new environments it's easy to make accidental slips. This section aims to point out some of the ways in which folks end up harming the trust and authority of their brands by ruffling their audiences' feathers, reducing the chances of any accidental train wrecks.
Recommended tools
While the platforms themselves are full of functionality, there are other tools on the web that can really take your social presence to the next level, offering you everything from scheduling functionality to insight and analytics not offered by the networks. For each of the major platforms, we list our favorite tools and talk about how they can help your efforts.
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