Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook

Front Cover
No Starch Press, 2010 - Business & Economics - 280 pages

The rules of marketing have changed. Savvy marketing professionals know that they must engage with individuals directly on the Web, and smart businesses know that customers can become friends—with benefits. Friends With Benefits shows you how to get into the online marketing game. A guide filled with tips, tricks, and real-world case studies, Friends With Benefits shows how you can increase your company's online visibility and Web traffic and win over online influencers.

Friends With Benefits explains how to:

* Connect with potential customers and join their conversations
* Tweak your website to support your social media marketing campaigns
* Promote your products or brand and manage the toughest negative online feedback
* Track marketing campaigns, monitor discussions, and measure success

With viral videos racking up millions of views and Twitter mavens influencing thousands of their friends, social media marketing is an essential new tool for every marketer's toolbox. The expert authors of Friend With Benefits guide you through the social media landscape, where authenticity and connections are more important than the size of your marketing budget, and real results can be just a few clicks away.

From inside the book

Contents

What Is Social Media?
1
What Are They
11
What Youll Need to Get Started
18
Get Social Media Ready
21
The Basics of Launching
28
Prepping Your Website for Social Media Outreach
37
The Social Media News Release
43
Flagging a Ride Finding the Right Bloggers
47
Do You Really Have a Crisis on Your Hands?
136
Social Media Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
148
Does MySpace Still Matter?
155
Marketing with MySpace
161
Tips and Tricks for MySpace Marketers
169
Understanding Facebook
171
The Basics
177
An Appetite for Fun
183

Trust Your Instincts
60
Netiquette Miss Manners for the Web
63
Who Are These New Influencers Anyway?
74
Stick Out Your Thumb Devising Your Pitch
79
Other Blogger Outreach Campaigns We Like
91
Rules for Following Up
97
Measuring Success How to Monitor the Web
99
Be Realistic Be Humble
105
How to Respond to Posts
111
Is Social Media Marketing Risky Business?
115
The Crowd Talks Back
120
Not Being Proactive
126
Damage Control in the Digital Age
131
A Crisis Management Primer
132
The Future of Facebook and the Facebook of the Future
193
Video Marketing with YouTube and Other Video Sharing Sites
195
What Makes a Popular YouTube Video?
200
The Wisdom of Stealth Videos
206
Elastic Path Makes Ecommerce Platforms
215
The Twitter Revolution
219
Ten Ways to Be a Jerk on Twitter
233
The Power of Crowds Understanding and Participating in Online Communities
239
Should You Build Your Own Social Network?
251
Afterword
261
Recommended Reading
263
Blogs and Websites
264
Index
265
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2010)

Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo have run social media marketing campaigns for national retailers like Best Buy, Future Shop and Brother International. They've been quoted as experts on social media on the CBC and BBC, and in Wired magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and dozens of other magazines, TV, and radio programs. Founders of Northern Voice, Canada's social media conference, they regularly speak around North America on social media, marketing, and emerging technology. Darren has 10,000 daily readers at DarrenBarefoot.com.