There has been an explosion of social media portals in the last 3 years alone, and now we are expected to know them all. I can tell you that keeping up is a full time job, so I think it’s important to at least know the groups.
Social Media Management. These are the tools to track and post your many different interests. Therefore big service companies use these to release all the great postings in timely bursts via a schedule.
Social Advertising Platforms. So you’ve decided to get in the game and build a brand new social media website. You don’t build it from scratch, you use a platform and customize it to your consumers.
URL Shorteners. This is a huge time saver when trying to track all those “user friendly” URLs that seem to go on and on and on for days showing 20 sub directories you don’t care about – Shorten the URL, post it and done.
Analytics. We want to know what’s going on with our site traffic. Therefore we track the activity, group that activity into categories and voila – an industry is born! I can’t wait to see who used my help page today (obligatory eye rolling here).
Social Brand Engagement. Has your Social Expert explained the “sentiment” of your brand and how it’s measured? No, then you will want this to know if consumers even like your brand. If they like you, then you can grow your brand evangelist base.
Stream Platforms. If you want video for your site and it should not have a logo from YouTube or Vimeo, then look into this service. They will stream it and measure the clicks so you can put value to all those videos.
Content Curation. Here’s a new one unless you love Flipbook like I do. Someone will repurpose your content and grow your brand outside your websites so SEO traffic will arrive more frequently. I’m not sure this one is very noticeable, but it’s growing.
Social Commerce Platforms. This one is similar to Social Advertising Platforms, but your currency is no longer just stories and opinions… Now you have something to sell and those “likes” or approval ratings can really matter.
Twitter Apps. As the spin off from an expanding service, these apps have a built in audience. However they still take time to succeed. If you’re Twitpic and Twitter bought you, then herald your success!
Facebook Apps. Much like any other parasite, you benefit from the strength of the parent. Facebook penetration is growing daily and so are the thousands of apps to help me enjoy my Facebook tabs.
Facebook Gaming. We know that Zynga has already cashed in on the FB gaming craze with their successful IPO. We will see more games from them to keep us focused on our Tablets and Smart-Phones that challenge our friends to a “friendly game of…”.
Social Ad Networks. Oh the horror! That’s right advertising markets just love your attention no matter where you go, so they will thrill you with endless stories, gadgets and news to keep you returning.
Social Data. It’s a never-ending sea of information and it’s got to be an industry too. If I want to know how many sites my brand evangelist are visiting, then I just call up my trusty web map of users.
Social Search and Browsing. Is this really a category or did someone just define what 90% of the stalkers are doing out there. I can measure it, but what’s the value? Now when I apply that search data to my brand and reference there friends, I’ve got data!
Blogging Platforms. This would probably represent the very beginnings of the Social Media revolution. They were the first people online to draw followers purely based on opinion posts… And, they didn’t need a major publisher to do it.
There’s plenty more in this map….
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