Welcome to our shorthand guide to Social Media for beginners…and I mean ‘beginners’

What is all this about social media?  Why is everyone talking about it?  What’s it for?  What could you use it for? What are the dangers? And where’s it all going to end?

What is ‘Social media’?: Stuff that people create and share through online networks.

What are ‘Social Media tools’?: Software applications designed to allow people to network online and share their own and other peoples’ content

Why’s everyone talking about it?: Because pretty much everyone can do it and is doing it.  Because the possibilities for marketing products, services – and ideas – through Social Media appear to be immense.  However… (see last point, below)

What’s it for?: It’s definitely about making money. Social Media people are always talking about ways to ‘monetize’ Social Media sites and the content produced through them.  And it’s also about connecting people in networks of niche interest.

What could you use if for?: You could use it to build or connect to networks of people who might be interested in  your products and services.  You could use it to find out things you need to know from a particular niche (or market).  You could use it to add some colour to your persona online and build relationships with existing customers and prospects.  Or you could use it to keep people in your huge, multinational organisation connected and up-to speed with the latest developments.

What are the dangers?: On the one hand, Social Media is an open, democratic network of people connecting with each other and creating and sharing content.  Nice.  On the other hand, it’s all about creating revenue for Google.  Why? Because all online content ultimately turns into data for people like Google and Facebook to monetize through online advertising and other people (affiliate marketers and small business bloggers) to monitize through affiliate schemes and other things.

What does that mean?

It means that whatever else Social Media is about, it’s not primarily about creating a better world of communication for you and your mates.  It’s driven by people looking to monetize it.  Including you, if you’re a small business wondering how you’re going to use Social Media.

Where’s it all going to end?: “We’ll be successful when you guys stop talking about us” said a Twitter boss recently.

Teenagers don’t talk about ‘Social Media’.  To them, it’s invisible. They just talk to their mates on it.  The people who talk about it are the people trying to make money out of it; whether it’s the ‘work-at-home’ people, the ‘get-rich-quick’ dreamers, the affiliate marketers, the online developers or just plain, regular businesses.

It will all end when people realise that there’s no ‘get-rich-quick’ and this madness dies down.  Just as you can’t all be at the top of Google for a competitive keyword, very few of you can make a fortune out of Twitter either.  Hell, even Twitter hasn’t been able to do it -yet.

Real-world networking doesn’t work when you try to use it to sell your products and services (unless you’re a bully) and nor does Social Media.

The problem is, there are literally hundreds of millions of desperate people trying to do it as a way out to beat the system and make a fortune.  That alone guarantees that Social Media will be stuffed to the gills with junk content and spammers trying to sell you stuff ranging from the unwanted to downright fraudulent.

For me, the promise of social media is its potential for developing relationships – and in that, nothing has changed since the good old days.  What we’re seeing is the first rush of prospectors to a place where the gold is pretty thin on the ground and we already know the names of those sitting on the rich veins.

And the real implications for Social Media are barely even being talked about yet.  What are the implications of one or two businesses sitting atop the richest, deepest, most personalised resource of freely-given global marketing data ever amassed?

Go figure, as they say.

Good luck!