What is Social Media?

Listening to some old N.W.A and just working away here at the office.  I have a lot of people asking me “what is social media?”  To which I could say “How long you got?” because that can be a very brief and a very long conversation.

What I mean is that – and this is the short version – social media is simply a digital format for human’s to do what we organically are driven to do by our pack animal nature – to share.  Whatever the purpose of that sharing, it’s ultimately about people sharing.  End of story.  We’re just doing it digitally now and it has changed a lot of the way business can and is done.

Now, it can be a long conversation because there are hundreds of sites out there to accomplish the use of social media to share on.  Then, break it down further that many of these sites have tools that supposedly make it easier for you to use them to track what people are sharing about your business.
For me, being someone who got his masters in using social media and works with it quite often for clients, it can be dizzying keeping up with each new shiny new tool that comes out on a weekly basis – I don’t want to imagine what its like for the Every Man and Woman.

So here’s my most basic advice:

1. Content is Queen – I’ve always believed the power-behind-the-throne is truly in charge.  Influencers run the web and they influence by sharing content.  Whether its written, photography, video, or some crafty multi-media item, its content.  Having quality content and publishing it on the internet is the key to social media.

2. Medium – McLuhan said it “The medium is the message.”  I swear by blogging.  I happen to be of the opinion that 90% of everything that is considered social media is just a stepchild of the web-blog platform.  It’s people using an easy to use content management system (CMS) to publish content on the Internet.  A blog permits you to publish writing, photogrpahy, video as well as share links (HUGE in SEO land) and provide a single spot that your community can return to time and time again for…you guessed it, content (both archived and new.)

3. Quality – Write for quality, whether it be informative or entertaining.  Always write content that you would want to read and that will leave you feeling at least a bit more informed when you’re done.

As I said, “my most basic advice”.  Work with those 3 items as a core and then contextualize your publishing based upon that trinity and you’ll have your start.  There is a whole different set of items in terms of getting people involved, and thats the difficult part.  Promoting and marketing your social media presence to keep people engaged takes…well, it takes as long as it takes.

For now, learn the basics.  More to come in the future.

More from Bigfish

• Your Excuses for Not Blogging Just Vaporized
• You’re a Social Media…What?
• Google Social Search
• What In The World Is A Widget?
• Farming Social Media Apps Cause Divorces, Job Loss, and Addiction in China

Bigfish Recommends

• How Not To Use Social Media (The Arkayne Blog)
• Content Marketing With Social Media CRM (The Arkayne Blog)
• What Is Relevant Content? (The Arkayne Blog)