Manage all your social media marketing efforts with repeatable, improvable processes Winner of a 2013 Small Business Book Award for Social Media “In studying social media we must also embrace social sciences. Sociology, psychology, neuroscience, statistical analysis, ethnography, as well as marketing are at the source of Social Marketology, and Dragon explains how and why it matters to business.” —Brian Solis, author of Then End of Business as Usual “There is no longer any doubt that social media is one of the key digital trends that are reshaping today’s industries, brands, and customer networks. Ric Dragon’s immensely practical guide will help you get the most out of your own social media investment by identifying the processes and best practices that build real and valuable business relationships. Read it, and use it, today!” —David Rogers, bestselling author of The Network is Your Customer “If you think Facebook, Twitter, and the like are simply trends or fads, you’re missing the bigger picture. Consumers are more connected than ever before, and they are highly untethered (thanks to smartphones and tablets). Now that we’re past the whole ‘Do I really need social media for my business?’ Ric is here with Social Marketology, a smart look at how to get social media organized for your business.” —Mitch Joel, President of Twist Image and author, blogger, and podcaster at Six Pixels of Separation About the Book: Covering subjects ranging from the best-tasting breakfast cereal to the latest developments in cancer treatment, personal interactions are occurring with increased frequency on social media. And if you want to connect with customers, you have no choice but to join their conversations. This much has been established by the mountains of social media marketing literature produced in recent years. What has not been established are the best practices for creating the most ideal social media strategy for your particular needs—and that’s where this book comes in. In Social Marketology, cofounder Ric Dragon of the renowned search engine marketing firm DragonSearch, takes social media marketing to the next step—showing how to choose the best tools for your needs and develop a strategy tailored to your goals. Drawing from such process methodologies as LEAN and the Capability Maturity Model, Dragon helps you develop a social media process that is quantifiable, repeatable—and improvable. His process is based on these basic steps: Focus on desirable outcomes: Vision, Goals, Objectives, and Metrics Pinpoint the very smallest segments of your customers Determine the communities to which these microsegments belong Identify the influencers of those communities Create an action plan for your project Measure and constantly improve your efforts The beauty of Dragon’s method is its core flexibility. New social media platforms are guaranteed to pop up in the near future. Any strategy based on the methods in this book can be adapted to take full advantage of them. The age of blind trial and error for social media marketers is over. Social Marketology provides the means to implement an effective campaign that is testable, controllable, and fully integrated within broader campaigns and goals.