...First Take On Social Media Marketing...

Social Media Marketing Defined
Social Media Marketing is the attempt of using the form of communications known as Social Media Outlets to gain a customer base. This attempt is through careful infiltration of various social networks in ways that do not alienate potential customers, but instead pull them in with interaction and engaging with the customer on a more personal level which can be lost in traditional advertising. Social Media Marketing can be a double edged sword as some benefits of instant feedback and maximization of information sharing can be just as damaging as it can be a good marketing tool.
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The pros and cons of Social Media Marketing can be divided as follows:

Pros:
On Going Marketing
Brand Loyalty
Reach Unknown Potential Customers
Direct Connection to Customers
Customer Statistics
Instant Feedback
Maximization of Word Of Mouth/Information Sharing Between Customers and Potential Customers

Cons:
Time Consumption
Consumtion of Personnel Resources
Loss Of Control Of Marketing Efforts - Instant Feedback/Word Of Mouth
Delayed Return of Investment
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My Side of the Coin
As a Convention Chairman of an Anime and Roleplaying Convention known as Shinboku Con, Social Media Marketing is definitely a part of our advertisement campaign. Just plain old flyers and word of mouth wasn't enough, we had to change with the times and evolve as new markets opened. To be honest I have a team of five people who work on our Social Media Marketing year round from our own website, Facebook and Gaiaonline. We are even looking into other ways to reach potential guests such as Twitter, Google+ and adding a Con Chair Blog link to our website to give guests more of an insider view on what we are working on for the next convention as well as to seek out maximum exposure.

Does it have it's downside? Oh yeah. We had an incident this past year at our convention that made it to other social media outlets that got us exposure, but not in the way we had intended. Three people were arrested at our convention for a disruption that was quickly handled by police, and we are still unsure if the damage done by it being posted on different social outlets will affect us long term. We definitely saw a spike on our visit counter to our website following the information being released to the public in various formats, but the online social networks were the majority of methods on how people found our website. I guess that is just something we will have to find out as we get rolling this year.

"Man Spits on Officer at Video Game Conference at Holiday Inn
Police arrested two attendees at a video game conference at the Holiday Inn at about 7:15 p.m. April 30. The two men, a 27-year-old Cleveland resident and a 21-year-old Canal Fulton man, got into an argument over how the younger man was playing a video game. The younger man punched the other in the mouth about an hour after the initial argument. Police arrested the man for assault. While arresting the Cleveland man, he spit on an officer. Both men were released later that day." (Source)