Comparing Enterprise Social Media Consultants and Providers offers tools and processes to compare various types of social business, social media and social networking consultants. This came up this evening, when I responded to a question in one of my LinkedIn executive groups in which another member asked whether social media consulting was a “real business” for which market demand was real. I always appreciate these questions when they reflect a sincere desire to get a feeling for an emerging market space. Here is how I responded, plus additional details.
A Market for Social Media Services?
Depending on how one defines “social media,” it is already a multimillion dollar consulting and services industry. Most of the players have a marketing approach in which they help their clients to create content and interact with people in major platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, MySpace, blogs and specialized social networks. Most firms focus on consumer-facing (“B2C”) scenarios because the market for business to business use of social technologies significantly lags consumer uses. The three main types of social media services providers are:
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