I’m a Social Media Expert?
People throw this term around a lot and as someone who does social media as part of her job I decided to further explore the definition. When I started my search, I immediately found a great blog post from 2008 “What I Want a Social Media Expert to Know.” I was pleased to to know that I could quickly check off everything on his list, but I wanted to delve deeper into the definition on my own.
As someone with a marketing background, I apply traditional marketing to anything I do on the web. From understanding your audience, to knowing what will be value added content; there is more to social media than just knowing how to set up a blog, SEO, or knowing all the names of the most popular social networking sites.
One under-recognized area is the building of relationships both on and off line. One of the quickest ways to get recognized and bring traffic to your site is by conversing with others. I like to think of Malcolm Gladwell who discusses how influencers, mavens, and connectors can move ideas. One of the keys to success in online marketing is connecting with the influencers in your industry. As I am writing this, I typed into Google “gladwell influencers” and one of the first links was Increasing Social Media ROI Using Gladwell’s Tipping Point Framework
Apparently, I am not the first to think of this idea. This is a great slideshow that shows how to bring Gladwell’s ideas into your social media strategy.
Since I can and do this, I will call myself a social media connector/maven for now.