Tanya Ferrell is Passing Notes.

I’ve done a lot of reading on social media marketing and have found that there are 5 basic types of social media marketers.

1. The Spammers

These are the marketers that tell you to create several del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, furl, etc accounts and bookmark your own site content for the links. These people don’t understand SEO. The higher class of spammers will give you the PageRank of social networking websites, how many links are allowed in the profile, and whether they’re followed or nofollowed. These spammers would have you do something like this.

Avatar is a member of 11 social networking sites. Their site profiles have little to no information. They do have links to their own site and their profiles on other social networking sites though. Profiles like Avatar’s are spam profiles. The only thing keeping these profiles from being deleted is the fact that Avatar isn’t using anchor text for SEO or pushing Viagra.

Now, I’m not going to lie. A link is a link is a link. Sites need links. That’s 11 links back to their site. Every link counts, especially with something difficult like finance. No one wants to link to a boring financial site, right? Not exactly. Avatar actually has a halfway decent blog and they did an interesting post on web etiquette last year. With a little revamping, it would be the perfect kind of thing to push through social media. Maybe Avatar did. I don’t know. My point is that if Avatar had actually used the social networking sites they belong to, they probably could have gotten more than 11 links.

2. The Diggers

These marketers have several names. They could also be called the Sphinners, the Newsviners, the Redditers. All these marketers know how to do is get to the front page of their respective news site. They’re social media optimizers. They know that Digg users like to see Ubuntu, iPhone, and [PIC] in the titles of submissions. They know that if you seed your own news on Newsvine, you’ll get nowhere. These guys are like anthropologists.

Getting to the front page of a site like Digg is awesome. You’re most likely to receive a lot of traffic and inbound links from that. The problem with some Diggers is this: they are so obsessed with Digg that they’ll do whatever they have to in order to get on the front page. They’ll create off-topic content to make the front page of Digg. For example, a Digger might own a site all about baking bread. Digg users aren’t interested in bread. So the bread baking Digger will create a page about Ubuntu and iPhones on his site, submit it to Digg with the title “Ubuntu and iPhones [PIC],” get to the front page, and get tons and tons of links.

Good for him. I think Dave Naylor made a few good points on SEOmoz’s Whiteboard Friday (Part 3) though. He said that eventually, Google will have to stop using links as a way rank websites because everyone knows how to game that system. I’m pretty sure I’ll be dead before that happens. I do think topical relevance will become more important though, as Dave mentioned. Topical relevance is already important. One link from a site on the same subject is worth more than 3 from irrelevant sites.

Back to my bread baking and Ubuntu example. If you’re trying to rank for bread baking in the search engines and everyone is linking to you for your page on Ubuntu, will that help you rank for bread baking? No. And the traffic you get from Digg and other links will be completely worthless if you’re looking at conversions. People going to your site for that one Ubuntu article are not going to stick around to read about bread baking.

3. The Power Networkers

These are the marketers that tell you to immerse yourself into a community to understand it. They tell you the more friends you have, the more power you have. These marketers are the ones that use the Digg Shout feature weekly and actually know about Social Thursdays. They subscribe to 200+ blogs and remember to comment on all of them. When I think of the Power Networkers, the phrases “wasting time” and “inefficient” come to mind.

I’m a bit of a power networker in the sense that I like participating in communities, reading blogs, commenting on blogs, etc. But, I can do that because I have the time. In house marketers, business owners, single bloggers can be power networkers and be wildly successful. If you’re at an smaller agency handling multiple clients, you don’t have the time. If you’re handling a pharmaceutical company, an architecture firm, and a pet food store, do you really have the time to immerse yourself into each of these online communities? I doubt it.

4. The Experimenters

You could also call these marketers the Creatives or the Idea Guys. You’re likely to hear them say things like “Well, we had this idea that we could maybe use Twitter, so we did, and now we have some followers, so it was a success.” Experimenters come up with some really great ideas.

My one problem with Experimenters is that a lot of them take an unbusiness-like approach to social media. They don’t set goals or determine the definition of success before they start. They don’t start with a clear purpose - are we doing this just for branding or to increase sales? They are very hands off. Experimenters just put it out there and see what happens. Their social media plans are short term. It’s just an experiment. When it’s done it’s done. And one problem you see a lot, especially with Facebook apps, is that they’re not integrated with other internet marketing efforts like the website, email, SEO, etc.

The Experimenters are just lacking strategy.

5. The Strategists

Strategists are a quiet breed. I didn’t know they existed until a few days ago when I read a post from Maki at Dosh Dosh. Strategists understand the value of a link, like a spammer. They can work Digg as well as a Digger. They don’t waste as much time as a Power Networker. And they are as creative as an experimenter. In addition to all that, strategists implement all that old-school marketing stuff you learn in Marketing 101.

A strategist sets SMART goals and objectives before they start, and they measure the effectiveness of their strategy based on those goals. In determining their “target market,” a strategist might look at quality vs quantity. A strategist will target the most influential people within a community, whereas a Power Networker will target as many people as possible.

Social media doesn’t have to be an experiment. It doesn’t have to be time-consuming. You don’t have to learn the ins and outs of every community nor do you have to be spammer. You can be strategic with your social media. Now, where are all the strategists?