Challenges in Social Media Space

One of the biggest challenges in the social media space is having a complete understanding that social media and social networking are two completely different things. While social networking has been around forever, social media is fairly new. 

We all do some sort of social networking with our friends, colleagues and business associates. We reach out to people when we need advice, referrals, lead generation, etc.   Social networking is about advice.

Social media is using all the different tools on web sites to communicate socially. 
(Examples:  www.Myspace.com; www.Facebook.com; www.LinkedIn.com; www.Twitter.com)

Blogs and video syndications are also unique ways to communicate. If you combine all the social media tools to reach out to people, we have definitely experienced a paradigm shift in relationship building strategies. 

Now you can reach out to anyone.  You can reach out to complete strangers you really do not know and can get advice or even share your advice online.  This allows us to store great advice digitally.  Each of you have probably given or received advice but it may be forgotten after a week or so.  Now you can connect with others online for advice from different element s and store and save this information indefinitely. 

This switch to social media allows us to communicate more effectively and efficiently.

At the end of the day, they are two different things.  Social media is an enabler and is a way to do things faster, better and store the information.  Also social media can be used to drive people to your face-to-face events or trade show booth, while exhibiting at a conference or tradeshow.  We actually Blog at shows while online to talk about how the show is going or deliver content that others may want to hear.  You can also upload a video and/or images of an event or exhibits at the show.  You can interview attendees and post the video and images online and Blog about them.

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