A Universal Social Media Marketing Plan

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What a useful summation! It leads off with a little history:

In the early days (late ‘90’s) online advertisers focused on reaching the largest possible audience. The thinking was if they threw enough mud against the wall some of it would stick. Headline making deals were done for banner ads and sponsorships on the major portals, but the little guy didn’t get a look in.
Then in 2003 Google introduced Adwords. This was a genuine revolution.
Ads were only served to pages with relevant content and advertisers only paid if their ads were clicked on. The shotgun had been swapped for a rifle; relevant ads aimed at a relevant audience. Suddenly small businesses were able to get out of the car park and onto the ball park.
But the more people that used Adwords, the higher the price and the less cost-effective it became (today Adwords remains popular but once again it’s the big advertisers who have muscled in).
This led to many of the early adopters to look elsewhere.
They re-focused their attention to optimizing their websites for the search engines to generate free traffic. Free search engine listings tended to generate better quality traffic, but this too had its limitations and risks. Google could play God; one day you are on page one of the search results, then next day … poof… like Houdini in a mirrored box, you’ve disappeared. And there is nothing you can do about it, except plead and beg to be re-listed.
Entrepreneurs and marketers needed to find a cost effective way of getting relevant traffic without over-dependence on Google.
The answer was to build up a good reputation on the Internet amongst the people who were most interested in your subject. These people would then become your followers, evangelists and ultimately bring new customers to your door.
And so Social Media Marketing was born (although the title came along long after it was established).

Read Part 1 and Part 2 at SubHub.com