What is the foundation of social media? A simple question with multiple ways to respond, but I found a great post this morning that discusses the 5 C’s that make up the foundation of social media marketing.

• Conversation: Go where the conversations are taking place - Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, YouTube, etc.  Establish accounts and create your identity.  Stay up-to-date with your accounts and participate often.  Really get to know your followers and audience so you can actively participate.

• Community: Seize the opportunity to not only join and participate in conversations, but add your own value.  This is how you create a community, which you must work to maintain and earn the trust of your followers. A good site for community building (in addition to the ones mentioned above) is Ning.  Ning allows its users to create their own social websites and social networks. It’s a good place to create a form or community around your product, which in return can produce useful user feedback.

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What is the difference between marketing and advertising? Although it seems like a simple question, it is very common to confuse the definition of the two.

By definition marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, and delivering offerings that have value for consumers and society at large (American Marketing Association).  Marketing is the first step in developing a product or service.  Seth Godin said it perfectly in his recent post, “Just about every successful product or service is the result of smart marketing thinking first, followed by a great product that makes the marketing story come true.”

Advertising is the act or practice of calling public attention to your product, service, need, etc. (dictionary.com). Advertising includes paid ads, which can be online, in print, on billboards, etc. Advertising is a main component of marketing.

A good way to look at it is to think of marketing as a pie, in which you have slices that include advertising, market research, product branding, interactive media, SEO, sales strategy, lead generation, consumer involvement, customer support, and more.  Marketing is everything you do as a small business to facilitate a connection between your business and your consumer.

Our goal at WeddingWire is to provide the platform for vendors in the wedding industry to do both.  As a vendor you can create an account and build your Storefront, which helps you create and communicate your product offerings to your consumers (engaged couples).  Our vendor catalog, which is listed off of numerous networks (i.e. Martha Stewart Weddings, BridalBuds, WeddingAces), serves as a means of advertisement for your business for all incoming engaged couples to see.

What are your thoughts on marketing and advertising? Share your feedback in the comments sections!

In order to maximize on what Twitter has to offer, it’s important to build your community. To do this you have to start by figuring out what your objective is. Do you want to keep your followers up-to-date on your business? Do you want to share dialogue with followers, maybe potential clients? Do you want to stay ahead of the social media curve? Whatever your objective is, it is important to determine it first and then dive right in!

I found a great list of 10 tips to guide you in establishing your community. Here is a quick summary:

• DO - create a user-friendly ID. Your Twitter ID is part of your personal brand, so use your name or business name. If neither of these are available, blend them or stay as close to them as you can (ex: MegWW). Also, the shorter the name the better!

• DO - search for people. It’s complete normal and accepted to follow people you don’t know (a huge part of what Twitter is all about). So search for people in the wedding industry or even people from an industry you don’t know much about! Try Twitter Search or Twellow to find people to follow.

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Check out the results of a survey, summarized in eMarketer and Mashable yesterday, that outlines the benefits of embracing social media marketing.  Respondents were from the Marketing Executives Networking Group.

Customer engagement took first place, with 85% of surveyed executives citing it as the main benefit of using social media marketing.  Only 21% of executives, however, think that it is a “great lead generation source”.  That means most of those surveyed do not think social media directly impacts sales.

Regardless, the majority of respondents agreed that there are numerous benefits to engaging in social media marketing, given it is low in cost, it can be used a source of feedback and results, and it allows for direct customer communication.

Although this was a small survey, I think the take away message is that it would be beneficial to utilize social media marketing as one of your marketing mediums for 2009.

What do you think the benefits are for using social media marketing?  Do you plan to incorporate more of it in 2009?

You can now use Twitter People Search to track them down! Twitter is much more useful when you can find the accounts of your friends, colleagues, competitors or companies that interest you.  So whether you are searching for a friend or for WeddingWire, just click the “Find People” in the navigation bar at the top of your Twitter homepage and search away!

Not into Twitter yet?   Sign up for your free account today and let the fun begin!

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Interested in learning how Google Analytics and Google AdWords works? Here are three useful Google slideshows I found in a Mashable blog post this morning that you might find useful as you prepare your marketing plans for the New Year:

• An Introduction to Google Analytics - A quick explanation of what Google Analytics is and how it works.

• Google Analytics: Measuring Interactions - Demonstrates how Google Analytics measures website interactions (beyond pageviews).

• Google AdWords- A demonstration of how Google AdWords works. It provides tips and suggestions too!