What Is Social Media?

If you’ve been on the internet for more than 5 minutes, you have no doubt seen the term, “social media,” at least a dozen times. It’s all the rage and all the cool kids are doing it. So the question is, are you using social media in your internet marketing business? If so, how so? If not, why not?

Social media raises a lot of questions and even emotions. For example, some people hate the thought of social media. Are they afraid of it? Do they just think “it will never work?”

I don’t know.

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Social Media is the 900-Pound White Elephant in the Room

But I’m here today to tell you that social media is here to stay, it’s the giant 900-pound white elephant in the room, and you’d better pay attention to it.

Elephants are known for tearing things up that get in their way.

Where social media is concerned, you’d better embrace it or get out of the way—it’s a juggernaut that will only grow bigger, stronger, and faster.

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Mark my words–social media is here to stay—and Dominate

Two Important Benefits of Social Media

You can use social media many different ways. Some use it to connect to friends, colleagues, and experts in their field. Others may use it to promote themselves and their own businesses. Still others may use social media to find out what others are saying about topics that are important to them.

There are two main and very important benefits to using social media in your marketing. One is in establishing your expertise in a given field. Let’s say you are an up and coming chef. You understand the power of online marketing so you begin to establish your online presence—you set up a website and a blog, you get a YouTube channel, you set up Twitter and Facebook. You open some accounts at industry-specific forums and social networks that cater (pun intended) to your niche—like Pinterest.

Now, you do nothing but create, connect, and convert. Right? You create content that is compelling, builds buzz, and shows off expert knowledge.

You connect with strong players in your industry. You interact, collaborate, and learn from them. You also teach them a thing or two.

Finally, you convert passers-by to raving fans. This is a big deal. Social media can help get you conversions, too. Visitors to all of your web properties—-social media networks included—as well as other people’s social networks get to know, like, and trust you. If (or when) they finally decide to “buy” (whatever you’re selling—it doesn’t have to be a product), you will be at “top of mind” because a solid trusted relationship will have already been established!

You not only establish your expertise, but you also build your brand along the way by connecting with industry-stalwarts and people who are very interested in your subject matter. How cool is that?

The other very important benefit to establishing your social media “omni-presence” is in its effect on your search engine status. Google, Bing, and other search engines are giving a lot more weight nowadays to your “social signals.” That is to say, what other people are talking about in their own social circles impacts how they and their connections will find you in their searches. Check it out:

Google Realtime Search

Bing Social

Type anything into the search box to see how it works.

Now, those results are playing a part in how you and your site rank in Google and Bing, respectively. They are placing greater emphasis on social search in their results. So, pay attention to social media!