Social Media Marketing 2015 - How Did We Get Here?

I’m often asked how and why social media marketing become so important. Believe it or not, social media marketing isn’t revolutionary. It’s evolutionary. In other words, social media marketing was born of a natural progression in communications that began with the introduction of the internet.

Let’s take a closer look at how social media marketing became what it is today—a fundamental and essential component of all marketing plans.

The History of the World Wide Web

It took a long time for the World Wide Web to grow into an essential part of people’s everyday lives. The internet didn’t truly become a household word until the 1990s when dial-up modems and America Online were the go-to tools for both businesses and individuals who wanted to check out the latest technology craze.

Phase 1: The World Wide Web as a Navigational Tool

At first, the World Wide Web was a navigational tool. Users could find information in a one-way communication stream. Most Web pages were very text-heavy and used rudimentary programming to display information, which was not that different from how information would be displayed on a printed page. The World Wide Web was interesting to many people but used by few in its infancy.

Phase 2: The World Wide Web as a Transactional Tool

Usage rates started to change when the Web moved from a strictly navigational tool to a transactional tool. Suddenly, people could make purchases, ask questions, get responses, and more—all through the internet. Web sites were still primarily one-way communication tools, but people could perform actions on those sites that made their lives easier thereby upping the interest level in the Web immensely. Sites like Amazon.com became popular quickly, and the Internet started to grow and evolve into a tool that more and more people embraced.

Phase 3: The World Wide Web as a Social Tool

It didn’t take long for people to demand faster access to the Web, and with the introduction of cable modems and high speed internet connections, the user base exploded. However, it wasn’t until users found a way to join the world of online publishing that the internet evolved from a transactional to a social tool. With the introduction of blogs, people found a way to publish online diaries and communicate with others in a two-way conversation. The Web evolved into a social medium, and user-generated content was born. The new generation of the internet became known as Web 2.0 or the social Web.

When applications like Blogger and WordPress, which require very little technical knowledge to use, hit the online scene, blogging became easier than ever and more and more people joined the online conversation for a myriad of reasons. Thanks to these free tools and the growing availability of high-speed internet access at affordable prices (no longer did people have to pay per hour of use, rather, flat monthly fees became the norm), the barriers to entry for the social Web were shattered. Anyone was welcome to the party, and the party grew and grew.

Blogs became far more than personal diaries. They transformed into an important source of information from authoritative influencers, and businesses started to take notice. When social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook made it even easier and more entertaining to connect with people via the social Web, the online conversation grew louder and reached even further. By the time Twitter made its value known in 2008, the world had already gotten much smaller. Suddenly, more people around the world had access to more information in a timelier manner, and life would never be the same.

The Social Web Delivers Information across Borders Anytime

One of the first global stories that proved the reach and influence of the social Web came out of Iran and was delivered to the world not by experts but by everyday people via Twitter. In June of 2009, citizens of Iran protested following a questionable Presidential election process. News out of the country was halted, and the rest of the world waited with bated breath to hear what happened in the fallout from the criticized election. The world didn’t have to wait long as individual Iranian citizens found their way to their computers and began sending 140-character updates through their Twitter profiles to share the story happening on the streets as Iranians protested against the powers that be.

What made the story of the 2009 Iranian Presidential election more poignant was the fact that Twitter became not just a communications tool during the aftermath but rather, it became the communications tool. Its influence was so important that the United States State Department contacted the Twitter team shortly after the election protests began and requested that a scheduled Twitter maintenance that would take the site offline temporarily be postponed so communications could continue to flow out of Iran.

The global reach and influence of Twitter and blogs was demonstrated again in June of 2009 with the news of Michael Jackson’s death. That news broke not through a traditional news source but on an entertainment blog, TMZ.com. It took hours for traditional news sources to report what had already been announced on the TMZ blog. Immediately after TMZ broke the news, people around the world began talking about it on Twitter, and ultimately, caused the microblogging site to crash due to a massive amount of traffic. In fact, this would become a common occurrence in 2009 and 2010 when people around the world turned to Twitter again and again to discuss and learn about high profile current events.

If anyone thought Twitter or the tools of the social Web were meaningless, their opinions likely changed in June of 2009. The social Web was here to stay and it had become an integral part of society, politics, business, culture, entertainment, and more. In other words, the social Web permeated into all areas of life around the globe, and in 2009, the world recognized its power. Businesses that hadn’t been active on the social Web before would need to get active soon or they would be left behind.

By 2010, the social Web became mainstream. Hundreds of millions of people had Facebook profiles and Twitter delivered a billion tweets per hour. When a massive earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, 2010, Twitter and the tools of the social Web became more than just methods for sharing information. Suddenly, they became vital lifelines.

Twitter profiles and Facebook groups were created where people could publish information about loved ones they couldn’t contact, and millions of dollars in donations were collected through people joining together in support of Haitian citizens, using Twitter hashtags to ensure people around the world knew what was happening in the ravaged country. Again, the sheer volume of traffic to Twitter caused the site to go down temporarily.

Images of the aftermath taken by survivors were uploaded and shared on sites like Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook, and videos of the destruction, rescues, and relief operations showed the world how people could come together to help a nation in need. Once again, the power of the social Web crossed borders and influenced the world. The social Web was here to stay, and no one wanted to be left out of the global conversation.

Business Embraces Social Media Marketing

The first decade of the 21st century can be remembered as a time when businesses were wary of and confused by the social Web, but the second decade of the 21st century marks a time when businesses need to embrace the social Web and make it an integral part of their strategic marketing plans. That means large and small businesses should not only be present on the social Web, but they should also have a defined social media marketing strategy.

Businesses leverage a growing variety of social media marketing tactics every day, such as sharing a coupon or announcing a sale on Facebook or Twitter, communicating with people on LinkedIn, creating interesting content on a blog, uploading a useful video to YouTube, or sharing an informative presentation on SlideShare. Since social media marketing is still evolving, there is no written set of guidelines to follow, but that’s also what makes it so open, interesting, and fun.

The key word in ‘social Web’ and ‘social media marketing’ is social. As long as you’re contributing to the conversation that’s happening on the social Web, you’re doing it right. It may seem overwhelming and intimidating, but like any form of communication and networking, once you try it, you might just learn that you really like it. Remember when using email was a huge learning curve? Today, using email is not just second nature, but it’s something that most people couldn’t live without. Once you join the conversation on the social Web, you’ll learn that it can become second nature just like email is to you today.

The Disruption of Interruption Marketing

Critical to your business’s success on the social Web is your understanding of social media marketing as being very different from traditional marketing. It’s 2015, but this is still a common stumbling block for businesses.

While some people refer to social media marketing as “interruption marketing,” I argue that social media marketing is exactly the opposite of interruption marketing. Rather than causing consumers to stop what they’re doing, effective social media marketing enhances what they’re already doing. While a television commercial interrupts the program a person is watching, effective social media marketing should make a person’s online activities more interesting or better.

For example, when you share amazing, relevant content in a conversation that’s taking place among your social Web connections, you add value to that conversation rather than interrupting it. Traditional marketing is intended to stop consumers in their tracks, but effective social media marketing should encourage those consumers to continue on their original paths armed with more knowledge, support or confidence than they had before.

With that in mind, social media marketing has disrupted marketers’ long held theories related to selling products and building businesses. Instead of just catching the attention of consumers in order to deliver a message and provoke a response, effective social media marketing requires listening, understanding and participating to add value and build relationships without interrupting.

In short, social media marketing disrupted traditional marketing causing a fundamental shift in strategic marketing planning and tactical execution. It helped level the business playing field by removing the barriers to entry and enabling both small and large businesses (and every business in between) to join the conversation. Even if you have just a little bit of time, the social Web audience can be yours.

Adapted from 30-Minute Social Media Marketing by Susan Gunelius (McGraw Hill, 2010)

Susan Gunelius

Susan Gunelius is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc. and Founder & Editor in Chief of an award-winning blog, WomenOnBusiness.com. She is a 25-year veteran of the marketing field and has authored 10 books about marketing, branding, and social media, including the highly popular 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing for Dummies, Blogging All-in-One for Dummies and Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps. Susan’s marketing-related content can be found on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes.com, MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, and more. Susan is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She has worked in corporate marketing roles and through client relationships with AT&T, HSBC, Citibank, Intuit, The New York Times, Cox Communications, and many more large and small companies around the world. Susan also speaks about marketing, branding and social media at events around the world and is frequently interviewed by television, online, radio, and print media organizations about these topics. She holds an MBA in Management and Strategy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing.