Beginning Series on Social Media and Social Media Marketing

This is the first in a series of articles on social media and channeling the power of social media into massively effective marketing campaigns. Many of us are already using popular and highly trafficked social applications like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Plaxo, Linkedin, and others to connect with family, friends, and colleagues. Then there are the zillions of blogs, bulletin boards, weblogs, vlogs, podcasts, forums, and niche sites that exist in cyberspace to enable people from around the world to socialize and communicate with one another on small and mass levels. Let us not forget communication tools like Skype, MSN Live, Yahoo Chat, IGoogle, and other instant messaging applications that also allow people plenty of online socializing opportunities as well.

The Internet has Granted Media Access to Everyone

Traditional or broadcast media remains primarily a restricted medium with access reserved mostly for industry professionals with a few exceptions. Social media on the other hand is an open-access medium that allows almost everyone with an internet connection to generate web content and to share that content with small or large audiences, locally, internationally, and as most of us know-globally! You do not have to have professional associations, media-related degrees, or a huge bankroll to participate in social media. Most social applications are free to use and basic spelling and grammar skills or a quality program that checks for mistakes before publishing to the web, is all one really needs to begin building an audience of readers The more skills that you have the more you can take advantage of all that this platform known as social media offers

Well-informed entrepreneurs have found these online social media applications to be great sources for excellent business advertising and branding with little or no costs to them and requiring barely any effort at all besides catchy headlines and some carefully chosen words. We will be exploring social media business marketing, branding, and other concepts involved in utilizing the power of social media successfully in other articles in this series.

I would love to read your thoughts or any additional information and knowledge that you could share with readers about social media and social media marketing.