Perhaps the best way to explain Social Media is to break it down a little bit.  Printed media like a newspaper is a one-way communication—you read it but you don’t tell it what you thought of the article. Maybe you call a friend and tell them about it, but you don’t sit there talking directly to your newspaper. 

If you do talk to your newspaper, we’ll just back away slowly and let you continue…

Ahem.

Anyway, Social Media, on the other hand, allows for a two-way communication between you and whatever you’re reading or experiencing. The term Social Media can be applied to many different things--it can refer to a review website like Epinions.com which allows users to log on and share their opinions regarding a wide assortment of products and services, or it can be more complex like Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, or Twitter.

Are you sitting there with that frustrated look on your face because you don’t know what Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare or Twitter are exactly?  Don’t worry.  We’ll get to each of those and explain them to you thoroughly over the next few weeks. First, we have to talk about why you care in the first place.

You care about Social Media because contrary to popular belief, it’s not just about people making friends with each other and “liking” this and that and posting goofy pictures of their cats for everyone to enjoy. It’s about way more than that now.

Social Media has become an extremely valuable and cost effective tool for helping businesses grow.  It’s a way to get new customers, increase brand awareness, and stay connected with the public and even your competitors! 

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be talking about all the how’s and why’s of some of the most popular Social Media sites like the above-mentioned Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Foursquare, and what each of them can do for your business. Come back next week as we explore the wild and wonderful world of Twitter!

What in the Twittersphere is going on over there?

Tweet! Tweet!