Welcome to the first of a series of blogs on"How can businesses use Social Media" . We start with an Introductionto the social media in this essay.

Social media can be called as a democraticapproach to knowledge generation and content validation. Moving away fromtraditional media in a big way, Social media is two- way traffic between theconsumers and marketers. 

Simply put, Social Media ispeople using the internet to have discussions. A fairly simple concept, but itssimplicity does in no way underestimate its power. While generally topics as banalas what one had for breakfast are discussed, they also drown into more insightfultopics, such as politics, religion, world events and even your brand.

Social Media therefore is…

A social instrument of communication

A website that asks for your opinion

A website where the information is partially by the author andpartially by those who have interacted with it

As Wendy Schollum says

“The opportunity social mediapresents for your business is the ability to listen, participate and influencethese online conversations”.

Think of it like being able toposition your best sales person at the first worldwide networking event.Instead of being able to influence a room of perspective customers, your salespeople can "work" the nation, or even the world. How useful would itbe for your business to get direct access to your target market and ask them whatthey want? The return and impact on your internal systems, product/servicedevelopment and marketing would be immeasurable.

But, it is important to know howto stimulate this type of conversation. After all, simply setting up a Facebookpage or Twitter account isn't enough to get people chatting about yourbusiness. You need to have a clear social media strategy in place that outlinesyour goals, guidelines, tactics and even a crisis plan.

Keep an eye on the next essay on some of the statistics andstrategies for Social media marketing.

Tags: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Power of Social Media | Social Media for Businesses | Social Media for small business | Social Media Greenlemon

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