The Social Media Pyramid and its importance in social media marketing.

In my readings, I learned that Social Media Pyramid exists, and to understand this will help you develop your social media strategies. According to Dr. Randy Hlavac, Steve, and other social experts, there are six levels within the social media pyramid. These are:

• Social Networks
• News Aggregrators
• Passion Connections
• Video Connections
• Thought Leaders
• Virtual Communities

Like what Dr. Hlavac stated in his book; to have a better understanding of the pyramid will be able you to find high valuable audiences.

For better illustration of the pyramid, let me show you what the it looks like:

 

If you will take a look at the picture, the pyramid is made up of 6 unique types of social media sites. They are ranked from top to bottom. The rankings are not based on how big the sites are, but they are based on "the nature of the social conversations."

At first, I thought that Social Networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedln, etc, have long term social conversations, but I was wrong. I learned that they have shallow and short nature of conversations compare to virtual communities which has a long term and substantial conversations.

However, it doesn't mean that social networking sites are important. They are also needed to build your audience like News Aggregators, and Passion Connections. Why? because these sites are composed of individuals of every age, income, and interest. And according to the book, we will take them to other social levels to make a more significant engagement with them.

Lets take a look at Video Connections. The popular and widely used is Youtube, and according to statistics,

it has over a billion of users worldwide. At the same, it is used by marketers to engage and to communicate YouTube users by uploading interesting videos. 

How about Thought Leaders? This level consists of bloggers. Blogs can influence readers and is useful in marketing strategy. Using them, and generating your own blog content are great ways to cut through the clutter and go directly to the target markets you want to impact.

The last level of the pyramid are the Virtual Communities. They are the largest and the least understood part of social media. When it says that they are the least understood, I am wondering why? Anyway, virtual communities are formed everyday. They are formed because there are topics, issues, and problems that are needed to be discussed. And according to my reading, these groups are extremely focused on the same issue or need. Using them as your target market is the effective way to connect and to find high value customers.

Source: Social IMC: Social Strategies with Bottom-Line ROI, by Randy Hhlavac.

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