SMM – Social Media Marketing has revolutionized the concept of “Digital marketing“. Being a Social media marketing professional, you have the power to promote your brands/services/products across boundaries.  The basic concept of Social media marketing is to drive traffic from social networking sites which are quite different from conventional marketing concept. It allows users/organizations to create a relationship through communities without selling the product. In my opinion, it’s a contagious process that spread from message to message and build strong business clients connections that help to grow the business exponentially in a short time frame.

Social media management and marketing plans can help small business entrepreneurs to manage outbound and incoming online interactions along with other small business marketing activities in a more efficient manner. They streamline and consolidate how you listen to and participate in relevant conversations in the different places they’re taking place blogs, social networks like Twitter or Facebook, and other public and private Web communities and sites.

Social Media Marketing Platforms:

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking website carrying more than 1.5 billion active users, intended to connect friends, family, and business associates. You can use this social media platform to start networking with your audience. You can also take benefit to advertise your business to like-minded people. It’s a great tool for social networking and mostly uses by corporate and small business to market their business by creating social media engagement campaigns.

Twitter

Twitter has grown tremendously over the past few year. It’s an online social networking service that enables the concept of micro-blogging by sending the text-based message called tweets up to 140 characters. By using  Twitter you can raise your voice to share news, updates and live tweets. It helps to get engage with your audience. Using #hashtag your voice can reach to millions.

Linkedin

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social network for professionals, available in 200 countries with +50 million users credentials. By using Linkedin you can connect with your target people by showing professional credentials. You can post your message, article, and news to provide details about your product or service.

Google+

Google+ (Google Plus, G+) is a social networking and identity service that integrates social services such as Google Profiles and Google Buzz and introduces new services identified as Circles, Hangouts, and Sparks. It’s a great platform for engagement. Best part of Google+ is to rank your post on Google search engine.

Digg

Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg’s popularity prompted the creation of similar social networking sites with story submission and voting systems.

Pinterest

Like Google+, Pinterest is another pin sharing networking platform suitable for the Infographic post. Best part is the post ranking on search engine. I found it a great platform for engagement and marketing through boards and pins.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a discovery engine (a form of web search engine) that finds and recommends web content to its users. Its features allow users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos that are personalized to their tastes and interests using peer-sourcing and social-networking principles.

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos. In a real time, It becomes a hot favorite for people as new vloggers are coming and making money through visits and advertisement.

Yelp

Yelp is the recommended due to reviews. It’s a platform for more than 140 million active users sharing their reviews. If you are small business company and looking to get good reputation then Yelp can be helpful to get positive reviews. It also helps to improve your business reputation.

Instagram

Many people are still confused with Instagram to market business with pictures but it’s helpful and getting people attention as time moves on. Currently, it becomes hot favorite of people and businesses to market their business through engaging pictures and short videos. It basically enhancing the visual way of communication. This platform helps you to eliminate clutter, highlighting your products and services in a very visual way. You can use Instagram as a diverting tool of Twitter and Facebook.+

Tumblr

Tumblr facilitates to share anything like post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos from your browser, phone, desktop, email or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors to your theme’s HTML.

Quora

Quora is the most famous Q&A platform that allows you to ask the question with experts. Most recommended for product and service FAQs that normally your customer or client ask. It can a great asset for small business to aware their clients and customer to share information about their business.

Foursquare

Foursquare is a location-based “check-in” service that facilitates people to inform friends and connected people to where they are check in.  Like Yelp, this is a must-use platform for all small local businesses.

Affluence

Affluence is the private networking social media tool that allows businessman to connect with like-minded people and businesses to expand their reach. Industry experts and business owners use this tool to share information and business engagements.

Meetup

Most recommended for event marketing campaigns extending engagements with industry professionals or launch new products. Meetup is a powerful local networking and organizing tool for small businesses.

EFactor

EFactor is basically designed for entrepreneurs. It’s a community-based social site that has been used by small business owners and business development people.

Periscope

Periscope lets you broadcast and explore the world through live streaming video. By using this, you can easily watch where news is breaking, visit a new place, or meet people and share interests and all in real-time.

BizSugar

BizSugar is a social sharing, bookmarking and networking site for small business owners, managers, and entrepreneurs. It gives you a place to share your blog posts, videos, articles, podcasts and other content. You also get to view and vote on submissions by other Members.

Reddit

Reddit is a social news and entertainment platform where you can submit content such as text posts and direct link. The site users also to determine the best posts by voting submissions up or down. The best submissions appear on the main page.

Snapchat

Snapchat is an image processing application that has quickly grown in popularity. Basically, It’s a mobile app that allows you to send videos and pictures. Both of which will self-destruct after a few seconds of a person viewing them. Snapchat is also a fun messaging app. You can capture a photo or brief video with it, then add a caption or doodle or filter/lens over top, and send the finished creation (called a snap) to a friend. Alternatively, you can add your snap to your “story”, a 24-hour collection of all your snaps that’s broadcasted to the world or just your followers.