KEY POINTS:
Good question. People tend to think of social media as social networking, blogs, podcasts, wikis, Second Life ... an on and on. At social media consultancy iJump, we have a pretty comprehensive definition - we'll get to that in just a bit - but the best one we've found is, "people talking to each other online".
There are a lot of facets to social media, and they all overlap. To make it easier to understand, we've broken them down into five areas - tools to create (like blogs, podcasts and online video), tools to connect (mostly social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn), tools to share (like photo sharing site Flickr), tools to collaborate (like wikis) and tools to define the world (like tagging).
Why is it called social media? Here's the smarty pants answer: because it's social, and because it's media.
It's social because it doesn't work with just one person. Kind of like the tango - it takes at least two. Social media is an ongoing conversation, which is a different mindset from the way many of us think about marketing. Too often marketing's about launching a message at an audience, and waiting for them to come back and buy stuff. Instead, the social media audience has an opinion.
In some ways, social media is like a call centre, or a conversation over coffee, except anyone can find it on Google. Forever.
It's media because it's a form of publishing, the same as TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. The barriers to entry have come down dramatically - now anyone with a few thousand dollars can set up their own TV station - something that was unthinkable 10 years ago.
But it still comes down to how well you communicate
* visually
* verbally
* simply
* with strong ideas
What can social media do for your business?
* It can close the gap between marketing and customer service
* It can help you co-create your product or service with your best customers
How? That depends on your customers, and on the social media tools you use.
A high-tech business, for example, like Dell, has a team dedicated to finding complaints and problems about Dell products on Twitter or blogs. Why? Because those complaints create a permanent record - a black mark against their reputation. Every company makes mistakes, but the ones that respond quickly and effectively will earn loyalty and positive regard from their customers.
If a big company like Dell can be flexible enough to listen to its customers through social media, can your startup? Next time we'll go into a bit more detail on what Twitter and other microblogging platforms can do for you.
For information on the cutting edge of social media, go to www.start-UP.co.nz.
