Senior marketing executives in several countries agree that the use of social media for corporate, brand and product marketing is not a passing fad - with nearly half saying it is a vital component - according to research sponsored by TNS media intelligence/Cymfony.

Social Media is a major trend.  You can't afford to ignore it.

Source - TNS media intelligence/Cymfony.

Many people have no clue about what Social Media is and how it can benefit their business.  This basic primer will help clear things up a lot.

In case you might have missed it, there is a lot going on today in what's been generally termed 'Social Media'.   As you may know if you've read the other content on our site, we feel this isn't just a little trend, it's a major revolution.  We foresaw this day coming, we just didn't think it would happen so quickly.

Let's start with a quick definition of what is making the web 'social'.  If you look at when online conversations started, it was before the web itself.  It started with Prodigy and CompuServ, and things like IRC (Internet Relay Chat).  Then came AOL and chat rooms.  It started with services that had forums and chat.  When the web started forums were kind of slow to catch on, but it was inevitable.  The web needed to grow up a bit first.

When the web started, in 1994, it wasn't social at all.  All the sites were about telling or selling.  Then came online reviews.  Sites like Amazon invited people to write reviews of books and products in general.  Amazon saw the power of social media very early on and they have been a leader ever since.

During all this many different web-based forum systems came into being.  Most people would not know their names, and only a few like PHPBB (PHP Bulletin Board) are even moderatly well-know in web tech circles.  But forums proliferated.  They even generated a variety of 'super-forums' like YahooGroups.  These enabled groups of people to gather, converse, and share info.

Amazon innovated in the area of user opinions and review further by letting you give a simple thumbs up or down for each review or comment. Now we had opinions of opinions.  And it added even more value.

Then came the first wave of Social Networking.  Yeah, I know it seems out of place on the timeline here, but that's because the initial social networking sites took a while to catch on, and they were eclipsed by later sites that got the formula right.  These early sites were things like Plaxo, and Classmates.com, then came services like Friendster and Tribe.  Those sites created a little stir, but it wasn't until several years later that MySpace came along that the true potential of social networking started to become apparent.

Next came blogging.  People started sharing their thoughts and opinions in what were initially called web logs, and this got shortened to the term 'blogs'.  Blogs weren't inherently social, but the early bloggers weren't just blogging, a few were creating platforms or applicaitons for blogging, and they added the ability for readers to comment.  That is when blogs became a cornerstone of social media.  These blogs generated micro-communities around the blog's topic(s) and the online 'social revolution' really started to pick up speed.  Early blogging platforms included services like Blogger which was acquired by Google.  Blogging really started to hit a chord when WordPress was born.

The blog wave created a whole group of new online publications or online magazines like TechCrunch, Engadget, and Mashable.  These are now major media properties which originally started as simple blogs.

Then came content sharing.  Sites like YouTube and Flickr allowed people to upload things and share them with friends and the whole world in general.  Not only did they let you share content, they let your visitors comment on that content and rate it.  This made YouTube.  The fact that you could tell what other people were watching the most, and you could see what was rated highly, enabled people to filter through the mountains of junk and find the few gems.  And the fact that people could register their own opinions of the content, was very engaging.

Another key area of content sharing was brought to the fore by link sharing sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us.  These let you share interesting news stories, or web sites with friends and the general public.

All of these personal thoughts, and opinions, and comments, and ratings, and rankings, are a big part of social media, but they are not the whole picture.  A big part of the picture is semi-hidden.  It's the communities of people with common interests.  This aspect is somewhat invisible because it's implied, but make no mistake, even though it's not as obivious or readily apparent, it IS a huge part of the magic of social media.  Finding people like yourself, and sharing new discoveries is incredibly valuable.  It's how things spread in the real world, and it's a huge part of the value online. 

Lastly, I have to mention the newest wave in the social revolution, micro-blogging.  Services like Twitter are taking the online conversation to a whole new level.

And there is more to 'social media' like online games, and virtual worlds, but this post was only meant to be a primer and I will leave those for another time.

What should you do?

First, I recommend you create a blog. Originally, blogs were mainly about sharing personal insights, and interesting stuff found around the web. Then it grew to become more communal, in that readers were invited to comment. This creates a dialog and is very engaging and creates a micro-community.

Next, I recommend you add forums.  These will snowball as your posts, and your follower's posts and conversations attract even more followers. This is not easy, but it’s not extremely difficult either.

Whether you go the forum route or not, part of the benefit of a blog is that the search engines value new content very highly and it bumps your search rankings significantly. Any regularly updated or new content will boost your ranking in the search engine results.

If you have any questions, contact us.  We're here to help.

A full-size version of that image is here.  This image is from the following post by Fred Cavazza on the Social Media Landscape at FredCavazza.net.

A related post: Social Media Revolution: Don't Miss the Bus

Social Media is with us to stay, so how do you manage your brand message effectively?  Control yourself.

You can't avoid the social media tsunami.  Your prospects, your customers, your employees, and your detractors, all have access.  In the past you could carefully control your brand message, yet even then a problem would occasionally crop up that would test the best PR skills.  Today you have to step up to a much higher level. 

Today's web society is used to an active conversation and it's not always civil.  How you respond reveals a lot about your organization and its culture.  Everything you say and do should be treated like a public conversation.  It's a conversation that's right there in writing for all to read.  You need tact, diplomacy, and restraint.  You can't control what someone says to you or about you, but you can control how you respond. 

You need policies.  You need awareness.  You need social skills. 

In the past your brand could have more of a one-way message.  Today, you need to be ready to respond effectively.  You can't stop negativity, but you can control the conversation by how you respond.

In early 2008, Comcast realized they had a problem when people were posting negative info about their service online.  Most brands would run for the hills, bury their head, or call their attorneys.  Comcast tackled it head on and won.  They put a team of customer service people on it.  They contacted the disgruntled customers directly online, and they addressed their problems.  This resulted in a lot of positive results.  These customers who were willing to complain publicly, were also willing to report their newfound admiration for Comcast publicly.

Today, many other brands are monitoring what the public is saying and responding.  They use various search tools to check on postings at places like twitter, and Facebook.  They use those same tools to get a

And real-world, off-line efforts often make their way back to the online conversations too.  GoDaddy recently started a campaign of proactively calling customers to see if they needed any help with anything.  I got one of these calls myself.  I was very impressed.  They actually helped me trim some unneeded services and save some money!  They also helped me figure out a feature that I had wanted to use, but did not have the time to explore.  All at no charge.  I was very impressed.

Then I noticed a major online personality posted a message on Twitter recounting the same experience.  Now that's the way to handle customer service in the era of social media. 

Here's a helpful post on the subject of managing social media.

It sounds easy, writing a blog, but it’s not.  There are some key tricks for doing it right.  Here are the Ultimate Blogger’s 8 critical elements from Dean at CopyBlogger.

CopyBlogger.com is a great resource for bloggers.  They really get it.  I agree with almost everything they write. 

What do they think is the main missing ingredient?  Copywriting skills.  Brian Clark says "Write in a strategic, persuasive, and compelling manner."

Dean Reick's tips in a nutshell:

1. Put the reader first

2. Organize your thoughts

3. Use short paragraphs

4. Use short sentences

5. Use simple words

6. Be specific

7. Write in a conversational style

8. Be clear

I could not agree more.  Read more here at "The Ultimate Blogger Writing Guide" (definitely worth reading and it's nice and short).

Enterprise 2.0 is the combination of leading web 2.0 technologies and social media tools in the enterprise.

Most firms have begun to apply the latest web and social media technologies and those who have embraced it are experiencing significant value.

From the excellent post by Fred Cavazza. (He's French, so his english is a little odd at times.)

A full size version of the graphic is here.