By Golden Ashby, SFAMA Social Media Director

Social media marketing has changed so much over the past few short years. People thought that it was just a tool of marketing or public relations when they first started using it. Now they are starting to understand that it also encompasses advertising, customer service, digital, product, finance, IT, sales and more. Social Media is a powerful tool by itself. Smartphones, tablets, blogs, applications, geo-location and other platforms are helping to create a new brand of social consumer. Businesses need to learn how to market to these new consumers in order to be successful. Then they can truly create a holistic and optimized experience using each platform.

There were many changes in the social media-marketing world in the past year. Google made a big move in the social space and introduced Google+. They followed up with Google+ Pages just one hundred days later. It is yet to be determined if Google+ will really evolve and grow, but it appears Google is on to something. Facebook launched launch Timeline, which allows users to update their profile to an exciting new scrapbook format. LinkedIn introduced company status updates for company profiles. This new feature allows company profiles to post updates that then appear in the news feeds of their followers, similar to Facebook. Twitter introduced their official “follow” button, embeddable tweets, and brand pages.

You can now create your company brand page on almost every social network. You will not be very successful at marketing to them though, until you know whom you are trying to reach, where you can find them and what they value. You need to know what new technologies should be on your radar, and which ones can you safely ignore in order to have a successful social business. Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group and author of “Open Leadership” and “Groundswell” will provide her take on what the New Year will bring in our February 8th content event in San Francisco. Join us for a discussion of the new social technologies and find out what companies today need to do to prepare for this disruptive future.

Picture Credits: LoudRocket