How is Social Media Used for Business?

That was a question someone asked me a week ago by a business owner who “targets individuals who are business owners/consultants and people within a certain age group”. She then added that she was ”wet behind the ears at this” and expressed hope that I could help figure out how to market her products. She further wanted to know “about blogging and how to attract followers and maybe even create a newsletter that could be linked to a social media site.”

One thing about me is I absolutely LOVE answering questions. I’d play Trivial Pursuit every day if only I could get my hubby (a Monopoly devotee) and my little one (a Candy Land fan) on board. Usually, when answering questions I write long detailed e-mails. But it occurred to me that I already adressed many of the above questions on my blog:

Let’s start with “what’s social media” – it’s basically a catch-phrase that refers to all the conversations between individuals, businesses and organizations, that happen online. These conversations can be in various formats – written words, videos, audio, photos, you name it. The key is not so much the form (full-length blog post, video, etc) or even specific channel used (Facebook, Twitter, blog, etc), but the fact that it’s a CONVERSATION (as opposed to a monologue). So if there’s a way for more than 1 party to join in and discuss things – through posts, comments, status updates, reviews, etc – then it belongs to social media.
 
As applied to specific channels:
 
Blogs – allow for conversations to happen through comments – that’s a social media channel
Facebook – is basically built on conversations – that’s also a social media channel
Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, etc… – conversations between users are either foundation of these sites (Twitter) or at least possible through commenting, linking, sharing, etc – that’s all social media channels
 
Newsletters (sent via e-mail) – if someone decides to respond to a newsletter article, there’s no easy way for them to do it other than e-mailing the newsletter author. Newsletters do not allow for open conversation easily visible to all parties; instead they are primarily means of one-way communication. So newsletters are NOT social media.
 
If you are considering whether to add social media to your marketing strategy, be aware of the barriers to avoid wasting valuable time and getting disappointed with the results.  

Of course, with tens of thousands blogs and hundreds of social networking/bookmarking sites, it’s important to narrow the list down quite a bit and figure out which social networks would be the best for you to be on. 
 
But there’s more to social media strategy than selecting the best channels. This post on building a social media strategy can help you get started. 

If you are considering blogging, then be aware of the time it’ll take to write and maintain a blog. It also helps to put together an editorial calendar at least for the first couple of months just until you get into the groove of things. I also wrote a post that helps decide whether to have a newsletter, a blog or both.
 
And don’t forget, you can leave questions for me in the post comments as well as by e-mailing me directly at yelena@oneclickva.com. Keep ‘em coming