Taking a page from the P. Diddy playbook, Ben Stiller is combining his comedic talents with his public relations savvy and making a run at social media marketing powerhouse networks like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. With the kind of star power that lends itself to gaining lots of followers/ fans/ friends or viewers on any of those networks, he is having considerable success.

The great thing for Stiller as well is that he is a comedian, and that gives him the breadth of material and approach where he can do comedy or serious and it will work on social media marketing, as it will be something his current fanbase will respond to if it is comedy and it will only serve to expand his media presence if it is serious.

P. Diddy said that new stars need to know how to work a Facebook Fan Page, and Stiller is showing that current stars can do a lot with each of the two mediums. All of these social media marketing tools are networks that he can use to promote both his own personal brand of comedy or his production company- Red Hour. In fact, his twitter handle is @RedHourBen. Mashable wrote a great post highlighting a short video he did with Ryan Seacrest (or should I say, @ryanseacrest) where Stiller gets Seacrest to visit him with a false promise of talking about a movie idea and rather asks him, in that classic Stiller way, if he could maybe give @RedHourBen a “shout out” on Twitter- you know, just for fun, no biggie…

The rest is great Twitter comedy, keying on one of the core issues that will start to come up for anyone as they get more involved with social media- who do you promote with your presence? How do you ask someone else to promote you and what you do? And comedy is a great way to reveal that truth- there is no hard and fast rule as it is each person for themselves.

Just as social media marketing guidelines and best practices will continue to evolve, so will the way we interact with each other offline about our online presences- and that will only intensify with the rise of personal branding and the importance of an online presence in your offline work and reputation.

The most telling thing about Stiller’s presence on these networks is that he is there, he is doing it in conjunction with his production company, and he is transferring all of his Hollywood stardom and gusto to social media. It highlights, in fact, not that some people are doing it, but how few celebrities are still on these different networks.

Popular Media with Facebook Celebrities and Twitter Celebrities

Scott

With so much press out there about social media marketing and different ways to utilized the social media networks, it is hard to know where to begin. A new report from Forrester Research tells us that 4 out of 5 online adults are using some kind of social network, meaning that social media is fast becoming a strong way for marketers to reach online audiences.

With that in mind, here are some of the key social media marketing tools for social media marketers to be using in their quest to reach the online consumer.

1. Facebook Ads

It’s the largest online social media network, and it should be the place to start for marketers looking for social media marketing tools. With their available demographic information, the ads can easily focus on the right people on their own pages, and receptivity to Facebook marketing ads gives good results. A solid tool.

2. Hoot Suite

This is a Twitter desktop client that enables marketers to manage multiple accounts at once and make sure that they are keeping up with only the tweets that they want to see and staying in touch with the people they want to contact. That’s what good social media marketing tools do.

3. People Browsr

No, that’s not a typo. PeopleBrowsr is a powerful social media marketing tool that, like Hoot Suite, allows you to manage multiple accounts at once. It also enables marketers to build campaigns, complete with tweet templates that can be quickly tweaked to respond to Followers or send new messages to others.

These aren’t the only social media marketing tools out there, but if you are looking for a place to start, these will keep you busy and full of ideas.

Social Media Marketing Tools

Scott