What is social media?

Social media is the use of a variety of web-based tools that enable people to collaborate and easily share information and resources via the Internet. These sites and tools allow people to talk, network, and participate in any number of social activities in an online environment.

Social media’s roots can be traced to the second generation or Web 2.0 services that started appearing in the early to mid-2000s. As Internet-based applications matured, it became much easier for the average person to use these tools to create and publish web-based content. As a result, people started generating content at an accelerated rate and self-publishing services such as blogs, wikis, and social networking sites (remember Friendster and MySpace?) gained popularity.

Internet developers soon created content ranking and tagging methods (also called folksonomies) to help people keep track and manage all of the content that was being developed. As these early tools gained widespread use, they continued to be developed in such a way that allowed people to communicate and collaborate more quickly and easily using the web.

Today, social media has matured and now encompasses a wide variety of platforms and can include text (think blogs), audio (think podcasts), video (think YouTube), images (think Flickr), and other multimedia communications (think Facebook and Google+). Thanks to social media, it’s easy to share your ideas, photos, videos, likes and dislikes, with the world at large – and find out what they think of them.

Social media is also a good addition to an SEO program.  Often the content on your SM sites will rank higher on search engines than your website. Image and video search rank extremely high and can be top refers to your website.

Because social media was purpose-built to help people collaborate more easily using the Internet, it enables conversations between people and organizations. In this respect it is very unlike traditional media, which delivers content but doesn’t enable its audience to participate in the creations or development of the content they receive.

Do I need social media for my business? Should I consider social media for my business?

I think that social media has sot to the forefront of people’s attention because it’s fun and easy to use. I also think that’s why businesses are apprehensive about adopting a social media strategy. But social media gives you what TV or traditional print media never could – a chance to be engaged and engage others. It has ushered in an entirely new level of interaction and collaboration with customers: you can find friends, business contacts and become part of a community or a bunch of different communities.

Organizations of all sizes are experimenting with social media marketing and grappling with the question of how to get in on what appears to be an especially viral way to get their message (and their products) out there. Like anything, social media has advantages and disadvantages to consider:

Advantages

• Engages your audience
• Builds trust with your customers
• Demonstrates that you are a forward-thinking organization
• High rankings on Google and other search engines
• Target audiences with focus content like a microsite

 Disadvantages

• Time consuming
• Can do damage to brand if done poorly executed
• Neglect – easy to not dedicate the resources required to maintain it

Because of its power and reach, taking the time to construct a social media strategy is critical for your business. Social media should be a part of an integrated marketing campaign.