What is Social Media Marketing?

Many years ago, one of my first jobs out of college was as an insurance salesman for Met Life. My sales manager sat me down one day and drew me a picture on a yellow legal pad (the iPad of the day). Basically it was two half circles facing each other. In the lower part of the half circle he put a dot. It looked sort like this:

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But bigger.

"Brad" he said, "those half circles are bellies and the dots are belly buttons.  All sales and marketing comes down to putting your belly button next to a lot of other belly buttons, and then getting personal". 

So far as I can tell, that is what Social Media Marketing does. It enables the user to connect with a lot of other belly buttons. Except, instead of a smile and a hand shake, there is the Tweet, Follow, Like and Friend. The method of connection is a variety of internet tools. All the rest is just detail. 

I will get more into that detail soon.