By Wayne Wilson
“Social media is kid stuff.”
“It’s a distraction and a time waster.”
“No one will ever make any money using social media.”
Just when we had convinced ourselves that it was safe to
ignore it, a social media wave is crashing over our heads. What do we do now?
Maybe it’s time to catch the wave.
Social media is a burgeoning and rapidly evolving
phenomenon. Its most familiar embodiments are those web sites we thought were
just for kids – MySpace, Facebook, and now twitter, among numerous others. It
also includes professional networking web site LinkedIn as well as some 200
million blogs. [1]
Structurally, social media (or what some refer to as Web
2.0) is online information content created by people using highly accessible
and scalable publishing technologies. It’s interactive, user driven (or
includes a high degree of user participation), community oriented, accessible,
and visible. [2]
According to recently published statistics, Facebook now has
over 200 million registered users, [3]
LinkedIn’s number exceeds 40 million, [4]
and twitter is growing at a year over year rate of 3000% with over 17 million
users in April 2009. [5]
Amazingly, the majority of twitter users are age 35 or older. [6]
And while much of the material on Facebook and twitter is personal in nature and not particularly useful for serious business
people, the phenomenon is turning a corner and can no longer be ignored by
businesses. Recently, USAToday reported that Wells Fargo and Bank of America
have begun to use twitter to communicate with customers. [7]
And numerous other large businesses are seeking to exploit social media. [8]
How should you approach the social media wave? The same way
a surfer does a big ocean wave – proactively lest you be swamped by the wave while
recognizing that much trial and error learning will be required before the wave
can be mastered.
Here are a few suggestions for putting your toes in the
social media water.