Social Media: What Are Ya?

What does Twitter do?
nothing, it's a website.

Social Media may only be about 15 years old but social networking or human networking is as old as creatures have lived on earth.

Tweet Bark Meow Tweet

This is not just a human thing, the animal kingdom is socially networked too. And with the advent of places like Barn Mice and ASN, animal lovers have their own dedicated social media sites as well.

More Friends = More Money?
there's no correlation.

Twitter has grown 1400% in the last 18 months, LinkedIn is exploding and there seems no end in sight, MySpace has over 250 million user pages, Facebook gets over 800,000 picture uploads a month and the list of other places people congregate online is virtually endless.

Technorati measures the performance of over 180 million blogs and monitoring companies offer you a chance to harness the conversation around your brand on the web. And to a growing number of people, online social networking is quickly becoming a preferred form of communication over even traditional email.

Who Has All The Answers?
no one, not even self-proclaimed "experts".

There are readers and feeds and analytics and optimization - all bells and whistles that can confuse you if you are still wondering "what is social media".

Companies that not only embrace but commit to the Internet are seeing its power first-hand. The key component is commitment. You can’t tweet once a week or read a couple of blogs and grasp the vast potential social media can bring to your life and career.

Social media = Online billboard?
absolutely not.

One thing is for sure, there is not one correct way to navigate all this stuff. You just have to find your own, whatever way works for you.

If you think you may be out of uniform or not connected as well as you should be, just pick one, any one and connect to that.

Grab your miner’s helmet, some patience, an open mind and start diggin'. You'll find your voice.

What says you?

@knealemann

image credit: ceoworld.biz | imdb.com