According to the generally held opinion, all Social Media Marketing tools are limited to group creation on Facebook, blogging and Twitter, as well as uploading content to YouTube. To reason away this popular belief I gathered all my business proposals, reports and cases, and analyzed some hundreds of subject-related blogs. As a result, I made up a list of forty two effective and “fair” SMM tools.

1. Group creation in social media to invite there target audience representatives.
2. Viral marketing.
3. Blog creation and promotion on Twitter.
4. Article promotion in subject-oriented social media.
5. News promotion on social news web services.
6. Article allocation in social-oriented mass-media.
7. Bookmarks allocation on social bookmark services.
8. Distribution of information and links in subject-related communities.
9. Face-to-face work with opinion leaders.
10. Writing and distribution of social releases.
11. Promotion on FAQ services.
12. Link allocation in Wikipedia articles.
13. Lens creation on projects like SQUIDOO.
14. Arrangement of virtual flash mobs.
15. Organization and holding of online competitions, polling and voting.
16. Corporate blog creation and promotion.
17. Adding guest posts to close in subject blogs.
18. Adding informative comments to close in subject blogs.
19. Promo posts allocation in blogs.
20. SMO optimization of website/blog structure.
21. Unique free content allocation on website/blog (e.g. plug-in or e-book).
22. Blog notes crossposting on blog services.
23. Linkbaiting.
24. Subject-oriented community creation and promotion.
25. Subject-oriented social media creation and promotion.
26. The development of unique personage in social media, including promo information in its profile, active commenting, visiting other users’ pages, communication.
27. Social media members’ reward for website/blog link allocation in their profiles.
28. Celebrity participation (as a person keeping blog or as a community member, etc.).
29. Photo content promotion in media like Flickr.
30. Video content promotion in media like YouTube.
31. Audio content promotion.
32. RSS marketing.
33. Podcast recording and distribution.
34. Video log recording and promotion.
35. Undercover marketing at forums.
36. Writing and distribution of comments and reviews of the advertised product/service/brand/website.
37. Creation of mailing list and directing postings.
38. Branded widgets promotion.
39. Mems creation and promotion.
40. Webinar holding.
41. Participation in Internet ratings.
42. Participation in recommender systems as an expert.

The list is still open as the SMM business is not mature yet: general standards are not determined, therefore, there is no well-defined list of marketing tools which unambiguously belong to SMM. I will be very thankful if you kindly add new items to the given list to make it more complete. So, if you use any other tools than that which are described here, please write about them in your comments, and then I will make corresponding changes to my article and update it.

In this article I would like to appear as a futurologist to consider modern Web 2.0 the most salient and fascinating trends. On carrying out certain analysis, on rubbing shoulders with software vendors and marketing specialists as well as on assessing various Internet projects state-of-the-art I defined top nine Web 2.0 trends.

1. Web 3.0 age is not going to come yet
People increasingly discuss the point that Web 2.0 concept has outlived it usefulness and that now we are on the threshold of Web 3.0 age coming. As for me, that is not the case for at least two strong reasons.
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The real value of any community, whether it is forum, social media or bloghosting community, is determined by its members. The members’ activity is a key factor of the community growth and development, therefore, an administrator should inspire it in every possible way. All the community members may be nominally divided into several types each possessing its special behavioral features. Armed with such knowledge, the administrator can line up the most effective policy of treating different types of community members.

Expert
Expert is a community member professionally trained on the subject discussed in the community who enjoys sharing his knowledge with people. Such members are the most valuable type of participants. The professional expert thoroughly enlighted upon the subject discussed is a real discovery for any community as this is namely his good counsel that will be searched by a considerable part of community members.
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If your wife specializes in social media marketing…well, you are a lucky guy for:

1. All the shelves in your house are completely stuffed with print and carefully leather-bound Wikipedia volumes.
2. Your children’s names are Ajax and Pandora, your dog’s name is Flickr and personally you are tenderly called Diggy.
3. Your friends feel panic terror of visiting you because, on greeting, your wife immediately seizes them and makes vote for Digg-news, comment posts and fill out social media profiles.
4. One of the walls in your apartment is amorously decorated with the framed picture of Gary Vaynerchuk.
5. When reading morning newspapers your wife rates worthy news as “+1 digg”.
6. The dinner is allowed only after you have added comments to all the latest posts in your wife’s blog as well as in the blogs of her numerous friends.
7. All your wages is spent on startups. And each time you invest into “the brain waves and million dollar ideas”.
8. In the evenings the whole family watches YouTube, and Flickr is used instead of your family album.
9. You have moved from your separate apartment to a hostel room exclusively for the sake of strengthening social bonds.
10. And, finally, your own bedroom is equipped with live streaming webcams to make some hot and spicy content available for public.

Today I post the next part of the post “Social Media Wolves”. You can read the first part of the article here.

6. Forum spam
Internet forums are justly considered the first robin of Web 2.0 technology. Being the integral part of traditional Internet, forums correspond to Web 2.0 philosophy in its very essence that is the user generated content. No wonder that the forums have become the first hunting field for social media wolves.

The social media wolves’ forum activities may be represented as either direct spam or veiled forum talks accompanied by putting some links. In the former case, special script spreads through forum base the posts of explicitly advertising nature. However, this technique is rather inefficient as more than 90 per cent of such posts are usually deleted by moderators. In the latter case, wolves place their ads in forums as just the routine users’ discussions. Expertly treated, such allocations are generally perceived as matter-of-course comments.
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They are known as spammers and Black Hats of Social Media Marketing. But in fact they are just wolves, Social Media Wolves being hungry, ruthless and highly aggressive animals.

They are constantly stalking Social Media for more new gains. The pursuit of easy profit develops in different ways: through Internet traffic, batch getting of links with keywords, by selling cheap Rolex imitations or by tricks with sending fee-paying SMS.

They are hated by all cyberspace, but despite all that, social media wolves continue attacking social media and its users.

So below are given top ten “black” techniques allowing wolves to subsist.
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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rTzIAWI4Ms

One of the problems faced when promoting new services using SMM strategy is a lack of informational reasons. You have to do your best to impact social media users as their tastes have become refined due to the great saturation of media market. Ads like: “Welcome a new service comprising such tools like blah-blah-blah – viva Web 2.0!” are hardly of any use now. Today we are witnessing the emergence and collapse of so many services that it is hardly possible to track all of them.

Here you are with the ten informational reasons for the effective impact on social media audience.

1. Write a story of a successful startup. The success stories are always exciting, so a well developed case study is sure to draw everybody’s attention.
2. Gain the support of celebrities. A comment – or even better registration – of a well-known person is a highly effective way of attracting public attention to the startup.
3. Make a review of similar services disclosing their benefits and drawbacks. Just let people know who is who in this market niche. And, of course, you are welcome to underline the advantages of your own service – but still being very careful. It is important to be honest: do not mention non-existent disadvantages of your competitors’ offers or non-existent advantages of your own service. Otherwise, you will be considered a liar.
4. Use viral campaigns. Startup promotion is exactly the case when a viral campaign can be highly effective. For example, you can spread information about a hidden page with the extended capabilities.
5. Write a short story as if you were a user. People like reading all those “zzz.com – first impressions” and “real users’ comments – zzz.com”. However, it is worth remembering that somewhat story of praise will not do at all. People want to read real impressions of an independent user.

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