So what is this "Social Web?"

Have you ever felt like there was so much new stuff to learn that you wanted to just go hide in the corner and ignore it all?  That’s what the Social Web Revolution feels like to me and others closely involved in helping businesses take advantage of this social communication phenomenon.  To give you an idea,here's 101 Social Media Sites you can use to "participate" in this phenomenon!

There is some controversy over who first coined the term “Social Web.”  It could have first been used 20 to 50 years ago, long before the likes of Facebook(2004), Twitter(2006), LinkedIn(2003), YouTube(2005), Google(1996), and even the World Wide Web(1960’s) itself.  Here’s a more current definition according to Wikipedia.org: “The social web can be described as people interlinked and interacting with engaging content in a conversational and participatory manner via the Internet.”

What has developed in a short period of time – about the last five years – is a mind boggling array of websites and portals and apps and cell phones (that’s another later story) and directories that are the social web.  And, it is revolutionary!

Before the time that GoDaddy was founded, 1997, the WWW land rush started that resulted in making a website mandatory for all businesses big and small.  Even before most companies had websites, businesses started finding ways to draw more internet searchers to their website than their competitors by making their websites “search engine friendly” or placing small, targeted ads on Google, Yahoo!, and MSN (now Bing) search engine results.  A new group of professionals known as “SEO’s” (Search Engine Optimizers) was born.  But, something was missing.

People are “social” animals.  We, for the most part, like to interact with each other.  Share thoughts and ideas.  Ask questions and get answers.  Websites, for the most part are not interactive, not collaborative.  You can click on buttons and move from page to page and see pictures move and elements move around the pages, but that’s not really “interactive.”  It doesn’t really create anything.

And then the world changed.  We’ve had techy kinds of forums and things where you could ask questions and hopefully get right answers about things.  Pretty good but people wanted more.  They wanted to communicate with their friends and neighbors and classmates and relatives.  They wanted to have a way to be more “social” on the internet.  Something more two-way instead of one way like a website.  Facebook is the most widely known example of what is now the Social Web, a synergistic amalgam of hundreds of “places” to meet, greet, interact with each other, 24/7, world-wide!  Mind boggling!

“So what!” says the small business owner who is busy trying to stay afloat in today’s economy and has little time to learn about “stuff” that doesn’t have anything to do with his products and services.  But doesn’t “it” have to do with your business.  Nothing happens until someone sells something to someone who wants to buy it, right?  Don’t you want to have a relationship with your customers?  Wouldn’t it be great to have a way to build and deepen that relationship over time even when they are not actually buying your products and services?  Relationships are key to success.  Know you, like you, trust you, trade with you.  And that’s what the Social Web Revolution is really all about … creating and maintaining relationships.

So where do you start?

You have to have a web presence.  That might be – usually is – your website, but it could be a blog or Facebook or LinkedIn or MySpace depending on your products and services or a combination of those.  If you don’t have a website, start with a website to represent your business.  And, although I have not mentioned email prior to this, email is and essential communications tool.  It is the one communications medium that spans all age groups.  You will want to apply for registration on major search engines and on local search websites like Google Places, Yahoo Local, Bing Local, Local.com, YellowPages.com, and even Yelp! or other location based websites.  Then jump into Facebook and learn it and how it can be of help to you with a Facebook business page or “fan/like page.”  Use YouTube to publish movies about your business and your products and services.  Use LinkedIn to publish a professional profile about you and who you are.  And Twitter…  Well, research your industry literature about Twitter.  Overwhelmed yet?

Most importantly, start slowly.  Don’t get in a hurry.  Learn to use the electronic tools at your disposal to slowly build that relationship rich platform for business growth.  But, do it now.  Why?

If you browse the internet to www.PersonalizeMedia.com/garys-social-media-count there is a running counter of “Social Media Counts.” This counter attempts to dynamically count 21 different categories of that social web “stuff” that is going on in the world.  I tuned in one recent Sunday afternoon for 60 seconds.  I was astounded and you will be, too.  On that Sunday afternoon there were 579 new Facebook members: 34,722 tweets sent on Twitter; 694,443 videos watched on YouTube; 1,388,889 searches made on Google; and 171,527,778 emails sent.  In just 60 seconds.

You can’t hide in a corner and ignore it.  If you want to stay in business you must become part of the Social Web Revolution.  MURCON can help.

How can MURCON help you take advantage of the opportunities presented by social media marketing for your business?

There are lots of social media sites and tools you can use.  But, which ones are the right ones for your business?  What kind of content can you/do you put on them?  How do you integrate them with your other marketing plans and programs?  How do you create that Internet Marketing platform you need?

MURCON can do the following to answer those questions:

1. Create a Social Media Marketing (SMM) strategy as part of your overall marketing plan.

2. Select applicable SMM sites to promote your business, products, services.

3. Develop and insert the profiles and other content for each of those sites.

4. Maintain the content and keep you aware of new ways to leverage the media.

5. Post status updates to one or more sites for you.

Contact Tom Murphy today for a free consultation and quote to take advantage of the Social Media revolution.