Prologue

On August 23, 1999, Blogger launched as one of the earliest dedicated blog-publishing tools. At that time, social media was considered a niche activity on the fringes of the Internet. But today, Blogger is the 16th most popular site on the Internet, hosting millions of blogs. In a span of three years, Facebook has grown to over 200 million users, and Wikipedia, for all practical purposes, has replaced Britannica as an encyclopedia.
Social media is today the most important phenomena transforming the Internet.

There is more to it than the phenomena, though. It also presents unique marketing opportunities, providing new ways to reach social influencers and allow for people to influence each other and do the marketing for the brand. Social influence marketing (SIM) forces companies to rethink how they market online, to whom they market, and how to structure their own organizations to support these new marketing opportunities.

Social Media Marketing For Beginner is written to help you make sense of the madness. This blog simply explains what social influence marketing is and how you can harness it to achieve your objectives as a marketer. It also aims to help you prioritize what’s important and what isn’t.

The social influence marketing space is changing rapidly, so by very definition, this blog can’t be completely comprehensive. It does, however, aim to distill the core concepts, trends, tips, and recommendations down to bite-sized, easy-to-digest nuggets. As social influence marketing touches all parts of marketing and all parts of the Internet, too, (from traditional Web sites to social platforms to the mobile Web), based on your own experiences, you’ll find some sections more valuable than others.

As you read this blog, keep in mind that the way people influence each other online and impact purchasing and brand affinity decisions is similar to the way they’ve done for thousands of years in the real world. The technology is finally catching up, and social influence marketing is fundamentally about allowing and encouraging that behavior to happen in a brand-positive manner online, too.

This blog helps you understand why social media matters to marketers and how you can harness it to directly impact your own marketing efforts in meaningful ways. Targeted at both marketers in large organizations and those of you who work in small businesses or run small businesses, it includes advice for every business scenario.