This is the first in a series of posts about how Social Media is changing the way companies all around the world conduct business. It will discuss both the benefits and the pitfalls and how you can ensure you make the right decisions. We’ll reveal company successes and provide you with enough information to make a judgment call for your business.

If you think Facebook is a fad or Twitter is for teenagers, you could be setting yourself up for a nasty surprise down the track. Proactive companies are looking to adopt and leverage these technologies as yet another way to promote their brand and increase market share.

Shouldn’t you be doing the same?

So what will we be covering over the course of these posts? We’ll be going into detail on the various forms of social media, how each one applies to businesses, what combinations are right for your business and sharing some success stories which will hopefully encourage you to jump in and get started. We’ll also be delving into the ever changing area of online advertising and how this fits in the bigger picture of social media. The world is evolving and with it advertising, marketing and brand promotion. Time and time again we see the companies that fail to adapt are the ones left behind. Don’t let that be you!

Now, lets get on with Part 1 – What is Social Media?

Social Media as defined by Wikipedia as “content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies.”

But what does that really mean to businesses like yours? What does that have to do with promoting your business and increasing your loyal customer base? Perhaps it can best be summed up by this short video by CommonCraft.

That video uses a well known situation to demonstrate a few concepts. Specifically the idea of collaboration, sharing of information, and the inclusion of your customers into your business processes.

Before diving in to the various technologies, if you have a spare four minutes I’d recommend taking a look at this video as a quick introduction into just what Social Media is all about. It certainly gives an eye opening insight into the sheer size of what we are looking at.

Frightening numbers? Hopefully you now see it as something you need to delve into, but you just need the guidance to know where to begin. Lets end this first post with a quick run down on some of the more common Social Media websites. In the next few days, I will elaborate on these and present how they could be used in your business. Remember these websites are not the only aspect of Social media, and we will cover that in the next post.

Make sure you tune in.

Facebook – Facebook is a global social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region.

LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003 mainly used for professional networking.

Twitter – Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.

Digg – Digg is a social news website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories.

MySpace – MySpace is a social networking website

YouTube – YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos.

Definitions from Wikipedia.