What is social media and why do I need it?
Posted by vickivanv on August 2, 2009 · Leave a Comment
You can hardly turn around without hearing about sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. You might even have dabbled around with them for fun. But what do they really have to do with my business, you might ask. The likely answer is a lot. Okay, first of all–what does the term social media mean? Wikipedia has a pretty good definition in its entry on the subject:
Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. Social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content; it’s a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one to many) into dialogues (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers.
This defnition covers not only Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, but also blogs (like this one), Flickr.com and other photosharing sites, podcasts, live video sites like ustream.com, micro audiopodcasting from such services as audioboo.com, and movie and book-centered networks like flixter.com and goodreads.com (a personal favorite of mine). You can put your words, information, video and images on these kinds of social media sites, bringing you in contact with more potential customers than ever before. You can talk with them, learn more about what they’re looking for and let them know what you’re offering, what makes your business special and unique.
I’d also recommend this fun video on social media from the excellent Common Craft series to examine the meaning of social media:
Like the ice cream makers, you can use social media to help people know and understand what you offer and how it can make a difference for them. This is just a quick introduction, with more to come on this subject and on paticular sites and techniques you can use to market your business in the digital world.
I’d also recommend this fun video on social media from the excellent Common Craft series to examine the meaning of social media:
Like the ice cream makers in the video, you can use social media to help people know and understand what you offer and how it can make a difference for them. This is just a quick introduction, with more to come on this subject and on paticular sites and techniques you can use to market your business in the digital world.
