As I’ve been talking to people and working with clients, I’ve realized that strategies for using social media fall into five basic categories:

1. Content Creators
2. Content Filters
3. Networkers
4. Buzz Creators
5. Brand Monitors

Over the next week and a day, I’m going to cover each of these roles in some detail, discussing how the each affects channels used, time spent and content distributed.

Let me start with some quick definitions.

1. Content Creators

These are the people who want to be known as original thinkers in their field. They want to be the go-to person for ideas and good original content. Authors, speakers, coaches and professional service companies will often fall in this category.

2. Content Filters

These are the counterparts to the Content Creators. Filters don’t want to create the content. They want people to come to them for best information out there in a particular industry or around a particular topic. People in the legal, financial or real estate professions will often fall into this category.

3. Networkers

These are the people who want to apply good networking principles to social media. They want to meet interesting people and build relationships with them. Job seekers are an obvious choice for this one.

4. Buzz Creators

While the previous three categories will often by used by individuals, the last two will often be corporate roles. Buzz creators have a product or a brick-and-mortor establishment which they want people to know about. Restaurants, retail establishments and product marketers are the logical companies to be here.

5. Brand Monitors

This will mostly be for the big guys who have a national or international brand to monitor. Large product and service-based companies (Verizon, Pepsi, etc.) will often fall into this category.

Tune in over the next week while I go into greater detail on each of these.

And if you think I missed one, please let me know. I can always add another post or two to the series.

Tags: social media

This entry was posted on Monday, August 9th, 2010 at 8:17 am and is filed under social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.