It’s funny to me that people are still asking whether social media is viable for business.
Obviously, the advertising industry picked up on blogs and social media pretty early on and revenue streams based on advertising has matured quite rapidly. And like with anything on the web, the internet marketing crowd, with their usual approach, moved into the social media space.
But for the most part businesses that offer services are only beginning to scratch the surface of how to use social media to create a space in the market and grow their business. And with the constant growth and massive potential blogging and social networking provide, it’s pretty obvious that social marketing is anything but a fad.
Just think about it for a moment. What’s one constant of marketing - that people will forever be looking for ways to solve the problems they face. Getting married and want to find the perfect wedding planner? You can likely find her (or him) blogging. Traveling for the first time to Fort Collins, Colorado? You’ll probably want to comfortable hotel. Want to increase your business profits 50% over the next 12 months? There’s a business advisor (who I happen to know personally) who can likely help you do it (just give him a call or shoot him an email).
You see, publishing to a blog can establish your expertise in the area you’re an expert in. Your blog serves as a platform for sharing what you know. And when you share what you know with the people who need what you know, you’re creating a space for yourself in the market.
But the blog lets you go even further. Better than creating a market, your blog lets you create a community. Through conversations in the comment box and an open line of communication, your blog, and hence your business service, can become vitally important to your reader’s success. In other words, you can find your own niche within the market.
And here I’m talking only about blogging. Add in relationships in Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Combine that with all the social bookmarking and social sharing sites that allow for the spread of your excellent content and what you have is an entire social marketing platform based in conversation and relationship.
You see, it’s relationship that drive the market. Always has and it always will. Things got a little sidetracked as we moved from the quaint neighborhood drugstore and small-town lumber yard to the CVS and Home Depot monopolies. We gained price savings, but what we lost was the relationship.
Social media is bringing back the relationship into business. This is one of the reasons why I feel social media has exploded. Consumers can once again have control over the marketplace by choosing who they want to be in relationship with. And it’s why I strong feel that social marketing is not at all a fad. It’s here to stay. It’ll evolve, just as the internet always does. But the web based on individual control and relationship-driven services will continue to prosper.
The the only question remains is how are you using social media to increase your business? And if you’re not, why not( Maybe a call to that business growth advisor I spoke of would be a good idea)?
Let’s talk about it.
(note: image from kalandrakas on Flickr, 
some rights reserved)
My name is Dawud Miracle and I'm a
30 responses so far ↓
I don’t think it’s a fad, but I sometimes wonder if at some point people are going to start looking at their watches and realizing how much time they are spending on social media and how much time they aren’t spending with their friends, family, outdoors, etc. I could see social media evolving to a point where it takes up less of our time, but I have no idea how, when or if that will ever happen.
Totally agree.
Great post. However, Social Media requires a decent strategy to maximize it’s potential.
I don’t think everyone has picked it up early. I was at the Blogwell event and the big 8 companies that participated were shouting…
“you should check out this thing called a blog it’s cool!”
I definitely agree that while it is nice that some socialization has been allowed to flourish through blogs there is some concern about how far into the depths it will go. George is right to worry about the lack of physical human interactions. I believe that Social Media as we know it will continue to climb, but should we be wary of abusing it for fear of loosing touch?
The longer I do business online, the more I realize that networking is everything. Relationships are paramount to success, even if those relationships are between sites and media sources rather than between human beings. Yep, relationships are essential to success.
If the foundation of business is relationships then social media isn’t going anywhere.
The true value is networking and the best tool I’ve found is Twitter. I’ve met so many people that I would never have had to opportunity to meet in person. This creates business opportunities.
Now if someone could just tell social media that my hours are from 9-5 and not 24/7 - that would be great!
I completely see the value of all this and I agree that it is now possible to build relationships with people so easily and everywhere. I just need s full time PA now in order to help me with my work so I can be online more!!
Excellent one. Social marketing has got immense potential If the strategies are rightly implemented.
Dawud-
Great post. I know to us, it seems like social networking, social media, et al, have been around forever and are well known, but so many of my clients are still clueless. So I think we’ll see a huge increase in adoption across the board (just like websites; no one had one in 1994 or even 2000, but now who are you without one?).
I can’t wait. I love it.
Trying to jump on this myself. But I agree with some comments. People spend way too much time on Social Media and I have no idea if that will wane. But at the moment it’s not. So lets jump on it!
Great post. I do believe there are some great benefits from it but it is also hard work. There are more and more SM programs coming out and it’s getting had to follow.
I can’t tell you how many hits I get from facebook and twitter. It’s fantastic.
Nice and informative post, Dawud. Well, the social marketing has been helped me a lot and I definitely believed that it isn’t a fad at all!
Come to think of it, I always thought social media would eventually be useless for marketing. Now I don’t know why it is.
“Social media is bringing back the relationship into business.” This sentence changed my perspective on social media and social marketing as a whole.
I totally agree. Nice post. Cheers.
Good advice. Anyone who hasn’t already jumped on digital marketing needs to.
Speaking as Social Media Newbie, I can totally see its potential, but I’m daunted by the shere number of social media platforms out there…twitter, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, facebook….the list goes on.
I’ve just put the Addthis button on my website but I’ve got a sinking feeling that I’m going to have to spend at least half a year staring at screens like I used to do with ebay, facebook, and apple’s ichat when they first came out.
But the difference is, that this is potentially building those all important backlinks as well as traffic. That’s why I’m going to persevere with it all.
Good post - thanks!
I think that every company should have a blog - lets face it there is no need not to with word press. Skin it, link it to your site, start telling the world what you’re doing and why they should want to work with you. It’s the cheapest marketing tool around and reaches the most people. How can you lose?
But how much is too much social media? How much sharing is too much? Is there a limit to putting your information online and in too many places? If you are running your own business, a lot of what you put online is personal information, right?
Social media is bringing back the relationship into business. This is one of the reasons why I feel social media has exploded. Consumers can once again have control over the marketplace by choosing who they want to be in relationship with. And it’s why I strong feel that social marketing is not at all a fad. It’s here to stay. It’ll evolve, just as the internet always does. But the web based on individual control and relationship-driven services will continue to prosper.
No it isn’t a fad and it will become bigger and bigger within the next 5-10 years!
I agree with Rubber Soul - I am new to social media and there are so many choices.
I see the potential but it’s taking a lot of time learning each site and figuring out how best to use it.
The potential is there, though.
SEO and social media are quickly becoming almost essential for new bloggers to gain visibility.
I personally enjoy the social aspect of blogging even more that the money I make from doing so and I believe that it shows in the articles I write and therefore I the size of the community I’ll likely be building.
I recently graduated college and started interning for a PR/Advertising Agency in Chicago.
I thought I was pretty smart when it came to social media. (After all, Facebook started my freshman year of college.)
To my surprise, it turns out that I really know very little. I’m having fun learning more about it every day.
I feel that I’m coming into this world of pr and marketing at just the right time, because I’m in the same boat as a lot of the people I work with. The industry is changing, and it’s time to learn.