Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Introduction

You sat back, sighing with relief that your website was running faultlessly, optimized for search engines, and producing traffic, leads, and sales. Maybe you ventured into e-mail marketing or pay-per-click advertising to generate new customers. Then you thought with satisfaction, “I'll just let the money roll in.”

Instead, you were inundated with stories about Facebook and fan pages, Twitter and tweets, blogs and podcasts, Pinterest, Google+, and all other manner of social media buzz. By now you've probably tried more than one of these social media platforms. Perhaps you haven't seen much in the way of results, or you're ready to explore ways to expand your reach, increase customer loyalty, and grow your sales with social media.

Much as you might wish it were otherwise, you must now stay up to date with rapidly changing options in the social media universe. As a marketer, you have no choice when 80 percent of Internet users visit blogs and social media and when your position in search engine results may depend on the recency and frequency of social media updates. Since the second edition of this book, social media marketing has become an essential component of online marketing.

The statistics are astounding: Facebook has more than 864 million daily active users; more than 60 million blog posts appear on the Internet each month; more than 500 million tweets are sent per day on average; and 6 billion hours of video are viewed each month on YouTube. New company names ...