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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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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Much time had passed since the triumphant progress of Web 2.0 all over the world. Common enthusiasm for new advanced capabilities of the technology along with citing examples of case studies like: “The way our company started the corporate blog and earned megabuck,” had faded away. Nobody shouts about social media breakthrough any more as the revolution has already occurred. So today we are witnessing the worldwide prevalence of the leading Web 2.0 technology.

Social media had a far-reaching influence on our daily life. Web 2.0 revolution had dramatically transformed some important spheres of our daily routine. Just have a look at the fascinating list of nine markets that were radically changed by the advanced Web 2.0 technology.

1. Mass Media
With the emergence of social media, things with mass media will never be the same again. The social media has radically transformed the very essence of mass media business, no matter whether we are speaking of online or offline publications. Now the readers want to define the policy of periodicals, select the materials coming to the front page and choose the authors worthy of contributing articles to this or that media by themselves. Otherwise, the readers just change for more socially oriented sites or start creating their own mass media.

A growing number of users choose to get news from sites like DIGG. So the editors of traditional news sites, who as far as yesterday asserted that social news was just another useless yo-yo toy, now consider DIGG to be a strong arch-rival.

Moreover, the reviews of newsworthy blog posts are increasingly published in print media.

For many people video aggregators had replaced TV, movies and DVD long ago. Furthermore, unlike TV, YouTube is watched not only before going to bed but during working ours as well. Individual prime time for everybody has become a reality!

2. Show Business
Tired of searching the proven paths to their fans’ hearts, pop stars start making a beeline for them by means of personal blogs, or a page on Twitter and MySpace.

Even superstars like J Lo do not miss the opportunity to upload their videos to YouTube. Vin Diesel regularly updates his personal page on Facebook adding thousands of friends from among his willing fans. Less sociable MC Hammer keeps his personal blog on Twitter allowing 660,000 users to watch his every move.

Without social Internet technologies we would never know about the so-called “web celebrities”, such as Susan Boyle and Peter Nalitch who won fame by means of social media.
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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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