The Pro’s and Con’s of Social Media

Social Media networking such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc have over the last year grown massively and are very much the ‘In thing’ to be part of and as a business using this method of new age communication (Social Media) can be the loud speaker you never thought you had.

The Pro's and Con's of Social Media

According to the Internet World Stats website the latest figures show that 1,733,993,741 of us use the internet and while not all of these users will be regularly active either in networking or a potential client it does give us a huge platform to sell our wares.

Armed with the information that we have a huge audience, it is not unreasonable to assume that a percentage of that audience is interested in what we have to offer, or perhaps not just interested but actually looking for what we have to offer and for whatever reason just didn’t know about us. Enter your business stage left!

The camera is rolling, your centre stage and the world is listening.

By creating this online arena, you are not just providing information to the world but gaining information, feedback and comments (good & bad) back that help you to grow, improve and promote your business and services. Creating a community of like minded people that interact, explore and collaborate could set you up nicely within your community and deem you a noteworthy source.

Creating these accounts and communities is free, total free and budget wise is an ideal solution for those on limited marketing recourses however, be careful, the downside to this type of marketing and exposure does require constant attention to reap any real benefit.

Don’t underestimate the time commitment that this will consume. Allocating specific time each week (or more often if you can) to update and interact with your community is a must if trust is to be built.

Social media really does come under the category of ‘You must put in, to get out’.

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Business is Finally Embracing Social Media Marketing

Alterian has released the results of their seventh annual survey on Social Media Marketing. The survey suggests that 2010 will be the biggest year yet for Social Media Marketing with 66 percent of respondents stating that ‘They will be investing in social media marketing in 2010 and 40 percent of those saying that they would be shifting more than a fifth of their traditional marketing budget towards funding Social Media Marketing activities.

Measuring results seems to have slipped the net with only just over one third of respondents (36 percent) saying they are investing in social media monitoring and analysis tools. Only 7 percent said that they have no Social Media Marketing efforts of any kind.

Will 2010 Be The Year For Social Media Marketing?

The research has shown a definite swing towards Social Media Marketing for the companies surveyed, however the survey gives no indication towards the size of the companies questioned so its relevance to small businesses is limited. This is the first big Social Media Marketing news story of 2010, so if 2010 will be the first big year of social media marketing is yet to be seen.

Understanding Social Media

The term itself “Social Media” often causes confusion and misunderstanding and I, myself have heard it explained in seminars and workshops with at least three different slants, so let’s start with the basics.

‘Media’ is not a new term that businesses are not used to using; however the term media now applies to many different areas, the main two being, Industrial Media and Social Media

Social Media 2010

Industrial Media is commonly referred to as “traditional”, “broadcast” or “mass” media, and basically uses the good old pen and paper, newspaper, TV and radio. The content of which is delivered to you, not by mail (well sometimes but) by the author. The content is written, read or broadcast in full and although offers feedback ability, that feedback does not form part of the content. Interaction starts and stops with the delivery method and the person that is consuming the media.

Social Media (also under the banner of Web 2.0) is radically different to that. Social Media uses the internet and web technologies to deliver and transform content with the start of the content being OTM (One to Many) generating the MTM (Many to Many) viral structure. Businesses will often refer to this as UGC (User Generated Content)

Social Media is designed to be highly scalable, highly interactive and most of all very informative.

Examples of Social Media are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, blogs …  the list goes on for some time but the idea being multiple inputs providing greater, deeper information – like the snowball effect.

How Do I Benefit from Social Media?

Other than the really obvious one of access to an array of information, you can also provide and array of information that others find interesting and repeat/ forward all over the word!

Google LOVES content, it’s not human, and it does care if your pictures are really pretty, it’s a computer and computers read information and the information on the web is HTML code – simple.

Every blog article, forum post, tweet that generates traffic, buzz and interest in your web pages is gold dust. If it’s on the web it’s HTML and Google is reading it.