SMX Social Media Conference Preview: Categorizing Social Media Sites

Search Engine Land’s first Search Marketing Expo show focused on social media marketing, SMX Social Media, comes to New York on Oct. 16 & 17. I’m super-excited about the show, especially having the chance to stretch out with many sessions exploring how social media is, as I wrote earlier this year, an important "kissing cousin" to search marketing, something that search marketers must consider these days.

I’m going to do a special post each day this week previewing some aspect of what will happen at SMX Social Media. To start, here’s a quick overview. And remember, seating is extremely limited. Book today to ensure you get a place.

What is social media? Normally at a search conference, it tends to be something lumped into a single session. But with SMX Social, we’re breaking social media down into categories of sites for further exploration:

• Social News Sites: Like Digg or Reddit, these are communities that revolve around news topics and sharing. Our Extra! Extra! The Social News Sites session will cover them from a marketer’s perspective.
   
• Social Bookmarking Sites: Delicious or StumbleUpon are examples here, where content is saved even if it isn’t news or brand new, and the communities as a whole enjoy a sense of serendipitous discovery. Our A Marketer’s Guide to Social Bookmarking & Tagging session looks at these.
   
• Social Networking: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn are places where people connect with each other to make friends or business connections. Effectively Leveraging Social Networking looks at the networks and how marketers can tap into them.
   
• Social Knowledge: Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers are places where social communities build knowledge that is shared with others. Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers & Answer Sharing looks at them.

There’s more to the show than just sessions devoted to these four categories, of course. We have an overview into social media, plus a session talking about how to craft linkbait for social media news and bookmarking sites, a session on finding micro or targeted social media sites and a "Wikipedia Clinic" where people can ask for help with how they appear on Wikipedia.

In addition, we have a keynote panel featuring Joshua Schachter of Delicious & Garrett Camp of StumbleUpon. I’ll be looking for some reader feedback for questions on this panel in a future post.

Check out the entire agenda here, and don’t forget to register soon!