Focus With Your Social Media Marketing

Social media has been broadly embraced by the public for several reasons. But two stand out in my mind, as I relayed to attendees of the NEMOA Fall Conference in Mashantucket, Conn., Sept. 16-18, during my session, "Social Media Marketing — Separating Hype from Reality."

The first is social media gives a voice to the public. Blogs, microblogs (e.g., Twitter), discussion forums, photo sharing, etc., all give consumers the ability to publish content. While that may seem trivial, the late ’90s internet offered little of this — it was dominated by big brands and static pages. Today, if consumers feel strongly about a topic or have expertise in certain subject areas, it's a trivial process to publish that in blogs, among other places.