About

Social Media Marketing was the first textbook on the topic and we are delighted to provide an enhanced second edition for students and professors of social media marketing. Mike and I have worked diligently to provide a comprehensive book covering the full realm of social media marketing from how to strategically plan to incorporate social media into a brand’s marketing communications plan to social media research and measurement. We’re confident you won’t find a better book on social media marketing on the market today.

The new edition will be out in December and available in time for Spring 2015 Social Media Marketing courses.

The book is now published by Sage. It will be available in the U.S. and the U.K. in December, and in other regions shortly thereafter. Importantly, the first edition will no longer be published by Pearson. If you are a Social Media Marketing professor, you can request preview pages now from Sage.

If you have been using the first edition, your university bookstore will need the new ISBNs. And, please note – the first edition will no longer be available for use.

9781473913011 (paperback)

9781473913004 (hardcover)

If you are on this site, we know you already loved edition 1. What made it so special? The “ZONES” framework. Social media are a daunting universe of communication channels and vehicles. Many have sought to organize this universe in a visual way. Brian Solis and JESS3 were on version three of their Conversation Prism (http://www.briansolis.com/2010/10/introducing-the-conversation-prism-version-3-0/); earlier versions go back to Robert Scoble’s Starfish (http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/02/social-media-starfish/). Though there’s value in seeing their organizational frameworks, the complexity and volume of activity encompassed in these frameworks can be intimidating for social media marketing managers – and even more so for amateurs. After extensive study of the field, we organized the social media universe into four zones and this structure is referenced throughout the text. You’ll be glad to know the Zones framework still holds true despite the many developments in social media marketing.

I’m so excited about the changes to this edition. As the industry has developed, we are even more pleased with how well the framework organizes the options for social media marketers. That said, social media have changed in the years since the first edition was published. We know far more now about how to integrate social media marketing plans into the MARCOM plan for a brand. Little was understood about how to manage for social media functions internally before but now we understand the organizational structures that facilitate successful social media marketing. We know more about consumer behavior in social channels and how those consumers respond to influence attempts in social media.

Throughout the book, we’ve integrated the latest in research – from both academia and industry – to support the choices social media marketers make. Every chapter is infused with new examples from around the world. Every case is new – including the ethics boxes (called The Dark Side of Social Media) and the industry insights boxes (called From Bytes to Bucks) and those in the appendix. Plus, this edition includes extra examples in a new feature we call “Show Me!” to help students embrace this exciting area of marketing.

An all-new instructor’s manual, PPTs, and test bank will be available for adopters.

Read on for a brief summary of the Zones framework!

The figure illustrates the four zones of social media:

• Zone 1 is Social Community.

• Zone 2 is Social Publishing.

• Zone 3 is Social Entertainment.

• Zone 4 is Social Commerce.

You’ll note as we discuss various uses of social media for personal and commercial purposes that some areas overlap two or even more zones. That’s the nature of social media. All social media are networked around relationships, technologically enabled, and based on the principles of shared participation.

Zone 1: Social Community Social communities describe channels of social media focused on relationships and the common activities people participate in with others who share the same interest or identification. Thus, social communities feature two-way and multi-way communication, conversation, collaboration, and the sharing of experiences and resources. All social media channels are built around networked relationships, but for social communities the interaction and collaboration for relationship building and maintenance are the primary reason people engage in these activities. Many of the channels in which you already participate likely reside in this first zone. The channels in the social community zone include social networking sites, message boards and forums, and wikis. All emphasize individual contributions in the context of a community, communication and conversation, and collaboration.

Zone 2: Social Publishing Social publishing sites aid in the dissemination of content to an audience. The channels of social publishing include blogs, microsharing sites, media sharing sites, and social bookmarking and news sites.

Zone 3: Social Entertainment The zone of social entertainment encompasses channels and vehicles that offer opportunities for play and enjoyment. These include social games and gaming sites, socially enabled console games, alternate reality games (ARGs), virtual worlds, and entertainment communities. At this stage in the development of social media, social games are by a substantial margin the most advanced channel in the social entertainment zone.

Yet another aspect of social entertainment is entertainment communities. Though social entertainment is still developing as a channel, we anticipate that social entertainment communities will develop around other traditional areas of entertainment in the near future—film, art, and sport.

Zone 4: Social Commerce Our fourth zone is social commerce. Social commerce refers to the use of social media to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services. Social commerce leverages social shopping behaviors when online shoppers interact and collaborate during the shopping experience. Social commerce channels include reviews and ratings (on review sites or branded e-commerce sites), deal sites and deal aggregators (aggregate deals into personalized deal feeds), social shopping markets (online malls featuring user-recommended products, reviews, and the ability to communicate with friends while shopping), and social storefronts (online retail stores that sometimes operate within a social site like Facebook with social capabilities).

The second figure illustrates the four zones of social media marketing along with several vehicles prevalent in each zone.

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