What is Social Media ? Part 2

About a week before Christmas, I wrote part 1. Click here to read what I wrote.

I've purposely waited a couple of months before writing part 2. I wanted to get some perspective and find out what questions people had, and also do some exploring.

Here's a few thoughts:

- Social Media, also know as the Web 2.o is continuing to grow despite the lack of advertising revenue. How is it surviving?

People with money believe in it. I recently added another dimension to my social media world and that is Twitter. Twitter is a communication tool that combines elements of blogs and instant messaging and allows you to communicate with friends, family, strangers, even famous people that you don't know personally.

Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey of Saturday Night Live fame, Demi Moore & Ashton Kutcher, Al Gore & Karl Rove are a few examples that I have found.

But how does it survive without advertising dollars? Venture Capitalists that believe in it. Last week it was reported they received an additional 35 Million bucks as they work on designing a revenue model. A report I saw yesterday says that 11% of Adults in the US are now using Twitter.

Twitter allows people to spread word-of-mouth (the best form of advertising) to anyone, anytime using 140 characters or less. Similar to Text Messaging.

This means if your company does something exceptional, the world can find out about it via Twitter. Likewise, if something bad happens, the word will spread fast too.

-"There are so many different social media platforms, I can't keep up with all of them," is a comment I heard a few times. My answer: Then, Don't.

Don't try and do it all. Only do what you have time for. Just like there have been stories in the news recently about the thousands of text messages our kids are sending each month, there are people who can get obsessed about keeping up with social media too, which is not good. After all your life was already pretty full, I bet.

I'm more active than most people I know but I have a system. Once a week I write on this website. I also spend time doing a lot of reading, along with cutting and pasting for ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, but it's only a few minutes a day plus a couple of hours a week in my spare time to maintain.

Social Media is just a tool, but it is a two way tool that you can add to your marketing arsenal. The reason you want to is because you want to go to where your potential customers are. And if you are not, your competitors are.

Your comments are always welcome.