Summary

Social media usage is on the rise with billions of frequent online interactions, and as such, social media marketing is a great way to connect consumers with companies and brands.

Social media marketing is about listening to and sharing great content with the collective. This helps drive links, raise brand awareness, increase conversions, and kick-start conversations. This is a much more powerful tactic than the old practice of traditional advertising; the old strategies are no longer as effective.

One of the biggest challenges of social media marketing is measuring your ROI. Much of social media is not that easy to measure; you can’t put a numeric value on buzz and quality of conversation.

Social media portals, where conversations are ongoing and marketing messages can be conveyed (if done right), exist in all across the Internet. We reviewed social news sites, social bookmarking sites, and social networks in this chapter, but many other portals exist as well.