Social Media Networking For Businesses 101
To Twit, or not to Twit, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler to post to LinkedIn and Plaxo or to Facebook.
For those of you wondering whether or not all this hullaballoo about the new in thing for Business--"Social Media" is anything that you need to be concerned with, please read on.
It's time to take the blinders off and start to take notice that this technology obsessed society of ours has fallen in love with anything and everything that can be accomplished with a cell phone.
Just this afternoon, I walked a client through how she could use Twitter and 
Facebook to create additional buzz for her product offerings. She cringed a bit at the thought of developing such an intimate relationship with her cell phone (a geometrically increasing percentage of tweets--Twitter updates for the uninitiated--are executed from sms emabled phones). I assured her that it could become quite addictive--note to self, check for Twittering obsessed groups on Google. 
Told her that her Twitter account could be set up so that her posts were
picked up and displayed on her Facebook page and her LinkedIn and/or Plaxo pages as well. She did warm to the idea of accomplishing four tasks with the push of the send button...Lol. But I digress.
What is Social Media?
Short question, long answer. According to Wikipedia, "Social media is a term used to describe the type of media that is based on conversation and interaction between people online." "Social media are media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues. " Now what the heck does that mean? It's an outlet for people to quickly, easily and inexpensively communicate their likes and dislikes to hundreds, thousands and in certain instances, millions of readers. Wikipedia also states, "Social media have become appealing to big and small businesses. Credible brands are utilizing social media to reach customers and to build or maintain reputation."
Check out this article by Paul Chaney, author of The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media in Marketing Profs on "The Three Most Popular Social Networks for Business (and Why You Should Use Them)". It discusses the basics for LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook for Business.
I'll be diving into using this chanel in more depth, but suffice it to say that if you aren't using Social Media sites to help build your business, you should. More importantly, your competition probably is, or will be soon.
If you have any questions, please post your comments or email me at dcslistguy@greatmailinglists.com
Regards,
Doug