Website Design Blog

What is Social Media?

“Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue”

That’s how Wikipedia defines social media but, what the heck does that look like in real life, and how can social media help your business?

I would define social media as “a place to be sociable”. And you can be sociable anywhere you interact with people. For instance a table at your favourite Italian restaurant could be a type of social media. The table is the medium where you and your friends can be sociable.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and discussion forums are all examples of social media, that is, online social media. And it is ‘online’ social media that people actually refer to when they mention “social media”.

So online social media is us, somewhere on the internet, being sociable. Connecting with friends on Facebook, bigging-up Stephen Fry on Twitter or referring people on LinkedIn, if you are doing any of that stuff, you are in fact using social media. You are being sociable online.

I attended an event recently at The Fruit Tree Business Growth Club in Doncaster where the guys from Rocket Powered web design were discussing social media and what it all means. James Ashford was presenting and put it this way:

“We are all social media experts… if we get-on with people in the physical world, if we talk to people, interact with people, are friendly to people, take an interest in people, listen to people and encourage people in our everyday life when we are physically around people, then we are social media experts.”

I have paraphrased a bit there as I cannot remember word for word, but that was the gist.

But his point was that we can ALL be online social media experts if we simply do all that good happy friendly stuff online, on Facebook and Twitter, anywhere on the web where we are interacting with our fellow man.

Most of us instinctively do all that stuff everyday anyway, so we don't have to learn it especially for online social media, we can just be ourselves, but online.

If we can just grasp all that, and apply it when we communicate with our customers, we’re three quarters of the way there!

If you’re already using the social media websites that I have mentioned, well done, keep doing what you are doing and apply physical world social principles to the web-world.

1. Listen to your customers
2. Give them information they want
3. Respond to their questions
4. If they come for help, help them
5. If they want advice, advise them
6. Surprise them with nice things
7. Anticipate their needs
8. Celebrate their successes

All the things that you do in ‘real life’ you can do online and your customers will thank you for it. Remember, online social media should not be seen as an opportunity to sell, but as a new way of developing lasting relations with your customers.

If you need help in getting your online social media ball rolling, you’ve only to ask, you know where I am.

Bless ya

James