It is said that 35% of businesses don’t know how they might use social media.

The question I get most often is, “What is social media and how do I use it?” It is true that social media has become the hot topic for businesses. While everyone stampedes their way to the various places like Twitter and Facebook, you and I are going to be more strategic. First, let’s understand the term Social Media. The question asked should be, “What are social media?”, because social media is plural. There there are many components of social media just like there are many traditional media, as shown in this social media sphere visual from Brian Solis and Jess3.

The commonality between traditional media and social media, is of course media. Media is the method of communicating using text, images, and sound. In traditional media you know them as print, tv, and radio. Unlike traditional media which is one-way communication or one message to many. Social media is having a two-way conversation, through the sharing of text, images, and sound.

What has changed is that insteading of selling, pitching, shouting at our customers through advertising, we are having a conversation. Social Media is engaging, connecting and building relationships with our audience through our websites by simply creating content using text, images and sound.

Now when you think about social media, like Twitter and Facebook, instead of being confused by the technology, you can think about how you can connect and engage by sharing text, images, sound. You will see that everyone is sharing their blogs, videos and photos and having conversations about them.

To demonstrate the sharing of text, images and sound, is this blog you are reading, the photo at the top on the many social media components and this video. I love this video, it is an excellent commentary on traditional media vs social media. I think also it brilliantly demystifies social media.