Deborah Ng

The number of outlets for social media marketing is staggering. Blogs are just the beginning. Now you can choose from social networks (such as Facebook and X), social bookmarks sites (such as Digg), social pinning sites (such as Pinterest), social curating sites (such as Tumblr), social media sharing sites (such as YouTube), and even business networking sites (such as LinkedIn).

Snapchat allows snappers to use different lenses and filters to add whimsy and personality to snaps. Lenses can illustrate a mood, show holiday spirit, or add life and color to an image. Filters can display causes, show attendance at events, and promote a business. Lenses A lens adds special effects to your face, such as cat ears or a Santa hat.

You can find as many applications for marketing via mobile social media as you can imagine. Keep in mind the areas described in this list, whatever the device or market segment you target: News and updates: Distribute this type of information to your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn followers, as well as to people on your prospect list and your newsletter subscribers.

Periscope is a live streaming app that enables the user to broadcast from anywhere. This can be a good tool to add to your social media marketing arsenal. Like Instagram and Snapchat, Periscope is only available as a mobile app. Thus, you live stream directly from your smartphone.Your customers don’t have to be members of Periscope to watch a live stream, so you can link to your Periscopes from your Twitter and Facebook accounts so anyone can watch.

Mobile analytics is a bit different than web-based analytics. Because almost every social media service has a mobile application, it’s helpful to compare the effectiveness of social media in mobile versus web-based environments.You can most easily compare these platforms by segmenting social visitors. In Google Analytics, follow these steps: Choose Acquisition→ Social→ Network Referrals.

LivingSocial and Groupon reach fairly similar US audiences demographically, and both have expanded into the international market. If you plan on using either service for your social media marketing strategy, check out this table for details. Comparing Groupon and Living Social Groupon LivingSocial 74% are female.

Whether you’re marketing B2B (business-to-business) or B2C (business-to-consumer), you can find dozens of industry- or interest-specific social networks. Search online for communities in your industry. As long as the social network is large enough to support your time investment and continues to attract new users, you should enjoy enough of payback to make your effort worthwhile.

Hashtags help to make a photo searchable and can be a helpful element of your social media marketing strategy. For example, if you post a photo of shoes on Instagram and use the hashtag #shoes, #style, or #fashion (or a combination), that photo will show up in the streams of others who are looking for items by using the same hashtag.

You might consider using Instagram stories as part of your social media marketing strategy. Instagram has a stories feature that enables users to share rapid-fire images and video. stories give a place to add a sequence of photos or a video to illustrate a story. In this way, prolific Instagram posters can share a group of photos without hogging their friends’ feeds.