What is Social Media?

What Is Social Media?

Social media is the media we use to be social. That's it.

That really is the short answer. The story is in the tactics of each of the hundreds of technologies, all of the tools that are available for you to connect with your customers and prospects, and the strategies necessary to use these tactics and tools effectively.

Ask Your Audience

When I began writing this blog I wanted to hear what my audience wanted. I’ve written numerous books and technical manuals and I knew there was a standard formula for writing a typical publication. Basically, I kept it to the ABCs; accurate, brief, clear. However I haven’t been sure this blog should follow the formula. Did the audience for a blog on microblogging want a typical blog? So, I ask you.

I knew that if I asked my audience and delivered what they wanted, it would be a success. Go figure, ask your customers what they want the product. Then, you told me some interesting facts. First, you didn’t want another typical blog on social media. You asked for three blogs in one: Tactics, in which everything is explained; Tools, with which they can find a comprehensive list of all the companies providing social media services; and Strategy, with which you can apply all that you have learned from part one and part two.

The second fact I learned was from the first to questions on the survey, “Can you define social media?” and “do you believe that social media would have a significant impact on you and your business?”

What I learned by asking my audience these two questions was that 66.4% said that they couldn’t define social media and the remaining third lied. If it takes me nearly 100 chapters and more than 1000 pages to define social media, they didn’t know, not even the social media “experts” and “gurus.”

The second really interesting fact I learned was that 99.1%, nearly everyone, said they knew social media was going to have a significant impact on them personally and their businesses.

These two statistics told me that two thirds of everyone interviewed didn’t know what social media was, but that it was coming for them.

So What Is It?

The first part of the terminology, social, refers to the instinctual needs we humans have to connect with other humans. We’ve been doing that in one form or another since our species began. We have a need to be around and included in groups of similar like-minded people with whom we can feel at home and comfortable sharing our thoughts, ideas, and experiences.

The second part of that term refers to the media we use with which we make those connections with other humans. Whether they are drums, bells, the written word, the telegraph, the telephone, radio, television, email, websites, photographs, audio, video, mobile phones, or text messaging, media are the technologies we use to make those connections.

The application of the terminology social media in this blog is about how we can use all of these technologies effectively to reach out and connect with other humans, create a relationship, build trust, and be there when the people in those relationships are ready to purchase our product offering.

What social media is not his boxes silver bullets given to us by aliens that will instantly solve all of our marketing woes and create instant wealth for all involved. Too many people are viewing social media as a foreign constraints of technologies that they may or may not want to use to market themselves, their companies, their products, and their services.

In my keynotes, two questions always asked our, “Should I be doing social media marketing?” My answer is “Remove the term social media and ask it again. Should I be doing marketing?” See how ridiculous that sounds. The second question is, “How much I should spend on social media marketing?” I reply with “Remove the term social media again. How much should I spend on marketing?” And, of course, the answer to both is “Yes, and is much as you can!”

Social media is only a new set of tools, new technology that allows us to more efficiently connect and build relationships with their customers and prospects. It’s doing what the telephone, direct mail, print advertising, radio, television, and billboards did for us up until now. But social media is exponentially more effective.