If someone says spider and you reach for your thongs …..

If you consider web presence to be something you send to a friend via email for their birthday …

If you still think tweeting is a sound that birds make ….

Then perhaps you need to get online more!

With so many new social media sites (Facebook), ecommerce platforms (eBay), media (Source Bottle) and article banks (Free Sticky) popping up, navigating the World Wide Web is becoming a mammoth task for business owners everywhere!

On top of the day to day operational aspects of your business, you now have to contend with finding, understanding and then becoming a part of, the ‘next big thing’ that claims it is going to forever change the way your business communicates online, explode your online earnings and increase your brand exponentially!

Frankly it’s a daunting task to even the most tech savvy business owners and I would hazard a guess that not many of you would have unlimited time and resources to research and analyse every single site’s value to your business.

If you are unsure where to start or how to go about it, then this blog series is for you! This is a straight shooting, no bull basics for business web newbies. OVer the course of this series you will find the who, what, when, where and why of social media to help you plan your social media strategy for the best possible success.

The objective is to provide you with enough information and confidence to get off the fence and launch into Social Media.

So strap yourself in and let’s get started! First cab off the rank .. the overview.

Holy Social Media ….

Bam!  Pow! Like a fight scene in the original Batman TV series, Social Media has hit with a quick punch combination that could knock the digital wind out of even the most savvy business person.

So what is it?

To keep it short and sweet, social media mainly consists of the following:

Blogs

Surprise, the IT world shortened web log down to blog! A blog is a tool that allows anyone to create content (post) to the web. It was originally created for people to keep an online journal, with posts being categorised and listed in chronological order. Basically, you can write whatever you want (without knowing anything about web development or design) and send it live to the web!

RSS

RSS is an aggregator and filtering service. The acronym stands for Really Simple Syndication, and is used to describe the technology used in creating feeds. A feed is commonly recognised as frequently updated content published by a website or blog, but it can also include images, audio or video.

Social Search

Social Search has many guises! It can refer to search engines that list businesses and allow external users to comment on and rate, or the more recent development has been the introduction of search engines introducing specific search facilities for social media, i.e. search specifically for blogs, Twitter or feeds – people select what they want and can then interact directly with their chosen platform!

Social bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a method for internet users to share, organise, search and manage bookmarks of web resources. Using certain bookmarking services you can tag items with keywords and place them on your website to share your resource references with others. 

Social networking

The best known social network in Australia would be Facebook. Social networks allow people to create an account, add their personal or business information and then invite people to join as friends, GROUP members or fans. Through these networks you can share and exchange information online.

Micro Media

The best example would be Twitter. Micro media is a social media platform that allows anyone and everyone to create small, real time connections with multiple other people online 24/7. You type, you click a button and you go live to the web – people can read, respond and comment instantly.

All of the above platforms create a wide range of new tools to add to your business marketing mix.

The all knowing and kind of accepted Wikipedia, describes Social Media as, “Social Media are media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media supports the human need for social interaction, using internet and web based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many. It supports democratisation of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers. Business also refers to social media as User Generated (UCG) or Consumer Generation Media (CGM).”

Right!  OK … so to sum it up, Social Media is providing people and businesses collectively, the ability to connect with each other, in real time, online!

What this means to your business, is that there is another channel to inform or sell direct to your clients – not just locally, but nationally, even globally (if that is where you want to go!)