What is a Broad Spectrum Social Media Campaign? Read on. Most everyone is somewhat familiar with the leading social media platforms such as Facebook & Twitter.  With over one billion users, it would be difficult, if not impossible to find someone who isn’t either on Facebook or knows multiple people that are. Likewise, Twitter is an integral part of today’s social landscape and most people either use Twitter or are exposed to it everyday in the workplace, TV news, sports & virtually all forms of advertising.  But, having a Broad Spectrum Social Media, (#BSSM) campaign involves a much more in-depth use of many additional valuable platforms. Our research shows that several of these lesser known sites often produce better results and can be more essential to the campaign than the big two, Facebook & Twitter.

It almost goes without saying that the above are essential and can’t be ignored in any serious SM plan, but in this blog, I will profile several other major sites that we at Socially Buzzing believe are essential to most campaigns. We believe that a social media consultant should present your brand and your promotions through a wide variety of media, thus expanding your reach which ultimately leads to serious engagement with your company. Remember, social media is a two way path and the more you can communicate & interact with your target audience through multiple genre, the more likely you are to achieve end sales and ROI.

Below is a list of the major sites that we employ in putting together a #BSSM campaign.  With a lot of help from Wikipedia, I have attempted to give a short synopsis of the purpose & brief history of each platform. While most readers may already know and utilize these sites, I believe that this list is a useful quick reference guide to understanding each one’s purpose in the scheme of things.

Facebook:

Facebook is a social networking service launched in February 2004, owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. [pullquote]As of April 2013, Facebook has over one billion active users, more than half of whom use Facebook on a mobile device.[/pullquote]Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as “People From Work” or “Close Friends”.

Foursquare:

Foursquare is a location-based social networking website for mobile devices, such as smartphones. Users “check in” at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application by selecting from a list of venues the application locates nearby. Location is based on GPS hardware in the mobile device or network location provided by the application. Each check-in awards the user points and sometimes “badges”. The service was created in 2009 by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai.

Google+ (Plus):

Pronounced and sometimes written as Google Plus, this multilingual social networking service is owned and operated by Google.[pullquote]As of April 2013, it has a total of over 500 million registered users of whom 235 million are active on a monthly basis.[/pullquote]It was launched on June 28, 2011. Unlike other conventional social networks which are generally accessed through a single website, Google has described Google+ as a “social layer” consisting of not just a single site, but rather an overarching “layer” which covers many of its online properties. It should be noted, that many SEO experts consider G+ the “go-to” network for organic SEO boosts.

Instagram:

Instagram is an online photo-sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures, apply digital filters to them, and share them on a variety of social networking services, such as media sites including Facebook or Twitter. A distinctive feature is that it confines photos to a square shape, similar to Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid images, in contrast to the 4:3 aspect ratio typically used by mobile device cameras.

Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and launched in October 2010. The service rapidly gained popularity, with over 100 million registered users (and around 90 million monthly active users) as of January 2013.  Instagram is distributed through the Apple App Store and Google Play. Support was originally available for only the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch; in April 2012, support was added for Android camera phones running 2.2 Froyo. Instagram has no plans to offer Windows Phone support.

Linkedin:

LinkedIn Corporation is a social networking website for people in professional occupations. Founded in December 2002 and launched on May 5, 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. As of January 2013, LinkedIn reports more than 200 million acquired users in more than 200 countries and territories.

The site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Czech, Polish, Korean, Indonesian, and Malay. Quantcast reports LinkedIn has 21.4 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and 47.6 million globally. In June 2011, LinkedIn had 33.9 million unique visitors, up 63 percent from a year earlier and surpassing MySpace.

Pinterest:

Pinterest is a pinboard-style photo sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, hobbies, and more. Users can browse other pinboards for inspiration, ‘re-pin’ images to their own pinboards, or ‘like’ photos. The site was founded by Ben Silbermann (of West Des Moines, Iowa), Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp, the site is managed by Cold Brew Labs and funded by a small group of entrepreneurs and inventors.

Reddit:

Reddit is a social news and entertainment website where registered users submit content in the form of either a link or a text (“self”) post. Other users then vote the submission “up” or “down”, which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site’s pages and front page. [pullquote]Reddit is based in San Francisco, California.[/pullquote]

Reddit was founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. It was acquired by Condé Nast Publications in October 2006. In September 2011, Reddit was split from Condé Nast, and now operates as a subsidiary of Condé Nast’s parent company, Advance Publications.

Tumblr:

Tumblr, stylized in their logo as tumblr., is a micro-blogging platform and social networking website, owned and operated by Tumblr, Inc. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. Users can follow other users’ blogs, as well as make their blogs private. Much of the website’s features are accessed from the “dashboard” interface, where the option to post content and posts of followed blogs appear.

As of March 2, 2013, Tumblr has over 96 million blogs.  According to comScore, it scored 13.4 million unique visitors in the United States alone in July 2011—up 218% from July 2010. Its headquarters is located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.

Twitter:

[pullquote]The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, has over 500 million registered users as of 2013, generates 340 million+ tweets daily, and handles over 1.6 billion search queries daily.[/pullquote]Twitter is an online social networking service and micro blogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as “tweets”. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and by July, the social networking site was launched. Since its launch, Twitter has become one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet, and has been described as “the SMS of the Internet.” Unregistered users can read tweets, while registered users can post tweets through the website interface, SMS, or a range of apps for mobile devices.

Yelp:

Yelp.com operated by Yelp, Inc. is a local directory service with social networking and user reviews.

Yelp.com had more than 100 million monthly unique visitors as of January 2013, up from 71 million on the same time last year Yelp’s revenue comes from local business advertising.

You Tube:

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos. The company is based in San Bruno, California, and uses Adobe Flash Video and HTML5 technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos.

Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS, the BBC, Vevo, Hulu, and other organizations offer some of their material via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program. Unregistered users can watch videos, while registered users can upload an unlimited number of videos. Videos considered to contain potentially offensive content are available only to registered users at least 18 years old. In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion, and now operates as a subsidiary of Google.

By selecting these successful platforms, we know from experience and usage, that combined they compliment each other & create a powerful synergy that ultimately achieves the main goal of presenting your company to the social media world as a consistent and deeply involved player in, not just a couple, but in ALL aspects of this essential marketing genre.