Guest blogger, David Shipley is a writer, digital content strategist and part-time MBA student at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. He is also a technology buff and used the Radian6 platform to develop this post.

Traditional marketing textbooks state there are four P’s central to marketing – Product, Price, Promotion and Place. A fifth P – packaging, is sometimes argued as being another essential part of the marketing mix.

But with the ever-increasing prominence and use of social media, it may be time to consider a sixth P. People.

Where the traditional view of marketing treats clients or customers as consumers of a particular product or target audiences for a brand, social media helps companies create relationships that bring customers into the business and makes them part of the brand.

Chris Brogan says, “Brands who are lagging in social media have more to do all the way around.”

Odds are if you’re into technology like I am, the latest and hottest technology toys – smartphones, tablets and eReaders, excite you. Using Radain6, here’s a chance to talk about the social media trends and marketing implications around the most popular products and brands on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and more.

Smartphones

The smartphone with the largest share of conversations between mid-November and mid-December was the Motorola Droid, with 57.7% of all conversations, followed closely by Apple’s iPhone with 41.8% of all conversations.

For both Motorola and Apple, a significant majority of the sentiment was positive.

Jeff Roach, founder of Sociallogical, a Canadian social media strategy and education firm, said the volume and passion of conversations about smartphones doesn’t surprise him. “There’s a ton of dialogue about these products everyday, it’s pretty remarkable.”

Roach notes that Motorola could leverage its lead in conversations to build greater awareness about its specific brand and products within the overall Android space.

Even Apple, which isn’t particularly active in social media, could benefit from community building activities, he adds. “Apple has built a community around its brand, and they’ve done it without social media, but I think it’s really going to be hard to continue to build that community, to feed that community, without using social media.”

Tablets

Apple did lead the charge regarding mentions in the tablet arena. The iPad was the clear winner, with more than 58.3% of all conversations, with second-place Samsung Galaxy nabbing 16.7%. Like smartphones, the sentiment for tablets was mostly positive.

Interestingly, those who like other tablets besides the iPad, seem to like them a lot, with sentiment more positive for the Galaxy tablet than for the iPad.

eReaders

For eReaders, if you weren’t the Kindle, you weren’t getting a whole lot of attention. The Kindle was the focus of 96.4% of all conversations around eReaders.

But those who are competing against Amazon or considering entering the space shouldn’t lose hope, Roach says. “There’s a community around everything,” he notes, arguing that firms may be able to leverage social media to build communities around new products or services.

The value of measurement

According to Chris Brogan, there is value in measuring conversations around brands and products. “I can tell you from my very own personal experience in marketing and selling my own products and services that talk far outweighs action. Measuring percentage of conversation is good, for sure, insofar as it lets you know about awareness and the like, but I prefer to measure conversion.”

Do you think social media conversations influence product sales? How concerned should businesses be about their share of conversation?

David Shipley can be reached via Twitter or LinkedIn.