Heart you babycakes – great job (as always)!

Shelly

For those that don’t know, Social Media Marketing is connecting directly to the consumer. Businesses using SMM have the opportunity to say directly “this is what we can do for you” and have the consumer respond with “that’s great” or “what about this…?”.

Now let’s think about how MLM works. How many people HAVEN’T looked at at least one MLM program and seen the “sign up and then tell all your friends, family members, etc, etc”? Remember that, and then think back to how many tweets you’ve seen that went something like this:

RT @ RT @ RT @ tiny url RT please

So, somebody posted an article and asked to be RT’d. So they tell their friends, family members, etc, and it goes down the line.

So, is it MLM? Viral marketing? SMMLM? SM? Who knows the proper terminology? To my mind, who cares about the proper terminology? It works, and that’s the point.

I like how you called out MLM graphically and the complexities of social marketing. You are right on about gaining search engine value through word of mouth, WOM. I think a lot of marketers need to look past the first level to understand the SEO benefit of social networks. When it comes down to it, the most powerful form of marketing is the referral. What better way to gain loyal visitors than to have WOM do the work.