Social media is

To me, it’s a community. It isn’t a social network like Facebook, unless it is. It isn’t a tool that lets you add friends, followers or fans (except for when it is).

In a podcast by Jeremiah Owyang he said:

“Most companies treat social media like interactive marketing which is computer to consumer, social media is people to people”

(h/t: Logic + Emotion)

Image via Wikipedia

Websites, e-mail and banner ads are the staples of interactive marketing. They ask that people interact with words on the screen. Sure, the occasional site has “contact us” or “contact us now”, or something. But they are part of the conversation in the same way that a guy standing on a stage speaking to a bunch of people is part of the conversation.

The simple fact is, the conversation will, or is going on somewhere else. It could be on Facebook, “What did you think of what that guy said”, or Twitter, “Just watched dude speak @ communities. Says it’s about people.”

This isn’t new, we’ve been sharing things with our communities for a long time. The newness is the ease of the conversations.

I personally think that because of the financial situation that we’re in, a lot of clients are going to seriously consider using social media in some way. They’ll basically look at the lanscape, and decide that they want in.

And some will treat it like interactive as Owyang notes in the quote above. They’ll use computers to talk to people because people are a click away from becoming a customer. So it won’t be people talking to people.

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