Ahh good old social media, if you want to know what exactly I’m talking about Wikipedia defines social media as online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. Social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content; it supports the human need for social interaction with technology, transforming broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). So social media is basically sharing information with a lot of people and creating a conversation around that information. Just like when I’m done publishing this blog post I will link it on Twitter, which then updates my Facebook. All of that also ends up on my FriendFeed.
Social media is huge now! With the Twitter explosion this year and Facebook last year it seems everyone wants to share information and it just keeps on growing and growing. Now you see big companies using Twitter and Facebook with great success and it is not only helping them with their business but also helping them build their online identity. So is this all a fad? Is it just going to go away? I really don’t think so and here a few reasons why.
Targeted Audience
This is huge! With social media it is not like you are sending out a mass e-mail to a bunch of random people, people have to follow you on Twitter, join your group or fan page on Facebook, and subscribe to your videos on YouTube. This means people are actually interested in what you have to say or your product. That means if you are promoting something the people who are going to see it will most likely be interested in purchase the product or service.
Easy To Use
Another thing that’s great is that sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are really easy to get your profile setup and running. Anyone with the slightest bit of computer knowledge can start using social media sites with ease. Once you get the hang of how each service works you can start using them to their full potential.
Reach
There a over 250 million active users on facebook and probably what like 15 million users on Twitter? So let’s say 10,000 people think you are interesting on Twitter and you send out a Tweet, that’s 10,000 people that see that message! Most likely you have more followers than RSS readers and more followers than subscribers to you e-mail newsletter, so that means people who might not have even know about your website or product will know about it! Using social media gives you a much larger audience then just your website or blog would.
Its Free!
This is the reason you should be using social media, it’s free! It costs nothing to setup a Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube account. Just a few minutes of your time and you are good to go. I bet if you told someone 5 years ago there would be a free service that would allow you to market to hundreds or even thousands of people they would just laugh at you, but now it’s a reality and if you are not using social media then you should be!