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!