This is a multi-part post. Here was the previous one.

I am getting so I hate the term “SOCIAL MEDIA.” Yep, you heard it here first.

Hate it.

Social Media is just another term for communication and/or promotion.  But we see it in Wikipedia as this huge definition. The first sentence is helpful, “Social media includes web-based and mobile technologies used to turn communication into interactive dialogue.”

Communication… huh?  I think that is why marriages break up, we have wars, why Congress doesn’t get along or get things done, pretty simple.

I think that why many people in business fail to embrace it, is because it feels like smoke and mirrors, feels new and untrusted, feels like CHANGE.  (And we know what people think about that!)

When TV and radio were first making the scene, people were unsure about using this medium to “get their message out.” When that was what TV and radio did – report the news, get a message out.  Now commercials are part of our lives.  But these commercials blast non-personalized messages to anyone that will listen, I hear diaper commercials and I have never had children as well as many other messages that are not pertinent to me at all.

On the other hand,  my Facebook page is VERY specific to me.  It knows my hobbies and interests and most of the time, serves up an ad for a product I would actually buy, or at least think of buying.

At first this felt creepy.  It felt like someone was spying on me.  But I got used to it and so is your customer.  Social Media is a new way of finding them where they are with a message that reaches out and touches them.  That makes you (one of my old favorite terms), TOP OF MIND. Memorable.  When it is time to buy, you have more of a chance of that person buying from you.

Rather than to look at Social Media as some alien planet that does mysterious things, it is just the new way to communicate with your customer where they are hanging out.  They have cell phones now, they have computers now and it goes on and on.  Maybe it’s time for you to be there with them?