Is social media any of our business.

“Social Media” is the current buzzword in the online marketing industry. Just because it’s online, a virtual offering, we must not ignore it and hope it goes away. Reality is a little more frightening, it is real people using social networking that are hungry for information now, and if you are not “in their space” you risk not just being left behind, but trampled by your more social media aware competitors.
The good news is that it’s not too late. We are all learning what’s hot and what’s not in this massive global community, and we can learn much from each others wins and inevitable flops. After all - that is the very essence of what social networking is about, sharing your life, your thoughts, hopes and dreams with everyone.
I’m comfortable with the web, its been a significant part of my life for a number of years, but my learning curve in how to engage in this emerging medium is going to be an ongoing process, which of course I will continue to share with you.
The most talked about social networking tools are Twitter, Linkedin, facebook and of course mediums like this - Blogs. They are not without their frustrations, I’ll mention more on my challenges with LinkedIn in a later posting.
An illustration of the power of the blog and its short message cousin Twitter is demonstrated by social commentator extraordinaire Stephen Fry. He currently has, as of today, 338,970 followers on his twitter page. He keeps his followers up to date with his movements, thoughts and actions using short posts called “Tweets”. He now has 338,989 followers, 19 more in the time it took me to write this sentence. Currently he is on a small island in the Philippines with a dose of sunburn. He is regularly getting people asking him to promote their causes to his large “instant” readership. Naturally he links his website from his twitter page and from there you can access his blog. On his blog he records in some detail his dilemma with this. He states he has to take care for several reasons including that he can’t keep up with requests and he would, and has, crashed many servers as his “Retweet” suggestion is followed on mass by thousands.
What a dilemma we are in, our technology is barely keeping pace with our demand, it’s been quite a journey since Alexander Graham Bell’s 1876 patent of the telephone.
If you want to know more about how to apply these Social Media tools to your own business practice we invite you to register your interest in participating in our webinar series.