Social Media. What’s it good for?

No mat­ter our busi­ness or area of exper­tise, we all need to con­nect with new cus­tomers, shape our pub­lic image, and build a net­work in order to grow and suc­ceed. We are just get­ting past the infancy of this new baby. Everyone’s thrown up (or spent a for­tune on) their new web­site. Can you guess what I’m going to say is the Next Big Thing™?

Twit­book or Linked­Face are a part of the answer. But there are thou­sands of social media hubs out there, and I’m sure there will be hun­dreds of new and trendy sites and apps for years to come. While many of today’s dar­lings (cough, MySpace, cough) may well go the way of Friend­ster, none of these sites, by itself, is “Social Media.” But if you want to get, stay or be in busi­ness it’s absolu­tely essen­tial that you par­tic­i­pate in at least a few of the ones that appeal to you. Why? Any Mil­len­nial will tell you: Social media is you. If you’re not there, you don’t exist.

That’s what makes this media dif­fer­ent from all other media: A dynamic pres­ence online can tell oth­ers infi­nitely more about you than any flyer, arti­cle, com­mer­cial or sta­tic web­site (and not being there says just as much).

So far there are very few exam­ples of busi­nesses who “get it” when it comes to social media, and that’s prob­a­bly because the social media is not really about busi­ness. Social media is where peo­ple go to see their friends. If you come galumph­ing along try­ing to sell every­one some­thing, you won’t be all that wel­come. To be suc­cess­ful here some peo­ple may want you to take your shoes off at the door, or say hello first, or tell me some­thing I don’t already know.

Social media isn’t about find­ing some face­less “cus­tomer” or “con­stituent” to push our­selves and your wares upon. This is a world where peo­ple are try­ing to con­nect with other peo­ple who are excited about some­thing. Now it just may be they could be excited about you and what you have to offer. And it might even be a place where you can find out more about what your present and future cus­tomers might be look­ing for. But under­neath it all there is one huge moral force that guides social media: Be yourself.

Of course, it’s not all that sim­ple. The social media land­scape is rough and uncharted ter­rain, and like any­thing worth­while, it requires a bit of hard work to get where you want to go. It’s easy to get over­whelmed, and there are lots of mis­takes to be made. But even if you know noth­ing else, you won’t go wrong if you stick with the first rule of social media: Authen­tic­ity is everything.

That’s our promise to you, too. We’re always going to be us as we help you make the most of this won­der­ful new world.