Too blind to see the writing on the Social Media wall

Wikipedia defines Social Media as primarily Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences.

With its emergence, and high speed evolution has forced marketers worldwide to amplify the growing importance of this new age marketing. I kudos Peter Kim’s work in identifying 300+ organizations and their initiatives in the social media space. Peter’s work could be found here. Additionally Social Media seems to be an evolution that began with a revolution. Authors has already started penning down the idea of next generation social media

Even the current US election was not able to miss the Social Media trail in their campaigns. According to Amnesiablog there was an awesome live integration between Twitter, the US debate and Current.com. During the live broadcast, user comments on twitter were fed live to the video feed. Each tweet then animated subtly and dissolved into the background. Fascinating and a great sign of the future of traditional broadcast and social media. Martin Bowling at search engine people articulates that even the CNN team has several anchors who are & will routinely look to MySpace, Facebook and Twitter for comments, questions, segment ideas or even feedback.

Things like Twitter, a simple yet a powerful tool seems to have provided a new paradigm to how we communicate within a community. Twitting phenomenon seems to be catching like a wild fire. Another example of Twitter and US election is - Zdnet reported on how twitter benefited from US presidential election debates. Twitter usage and sign-ups received a healthy boost during last Friday’s first presidential debate for the 08 campaign. The official Twitter blog reports that, despite Friday traditionally being a slow traffic day:

• Friday updates jumped 18.5% from previous Friday.

• Updates during the debate increased 160% compared to same time last week.

• Signups on Friday were up 23%.

• Signups during the debate were up 135% compared to same time last week.

This may even forces us to wonder about How social media can help shape society, How Social Media Can Help Your PR Efforts, How Social Media Can Help your Business, Social Media Can Help You Build Better Blog, Social Media Forums Can Help Solve Common Ecommerce Problems, even how Social Media Can Help You Land The Job and so on. The answers are just click away.

Chris Brogan new ebook - Fish Where the Fish Are- Mapping Social Media to the Buying Cycle, on tying social media to the marketing buying cycle provides some interesting aspect for marketers venturing into the social Media space. He has further articulated 25 Ways Social Media Prepares You for the Downturn.  Louis Columbus at Cincom articulates the growth of social media and the proven ability to educate and inform more members of a team than ever before through Wikis, blogs and all other forms of social media needs to be tapped into to make call centers more effective than they are today. His take on mergence of a contact center into the social media stream can be viewed here.

Other attribute that I would like to highlight about Social Media is its ability to connect people without any boundaries, color, creed, religion, rank and so on. Not going much in philosophy, and just to highlight about how Social Media connect - I wrote a post on the weekend, INDIA Calling….are the Marketing Writers listening?, highlighting  about India’s importance for Global Marketing writers. I did mentioned about David Scott’s book and there he was commenting and comforting me with his following comments :

Hi Shiraz, I'm listening.
Wiley India Pvt. Ltd. is publishing a version of "The New Rules of Marketing & PR" for the India market. It will be paperback and at a much more attractive price than the USA import. I am not sure when it will be out.
I have been to India to speak once before and hope to come again upon the launch of my book in India.
Take care.

This not only demonstrates that David does believe and live what he writes but additionally the value of social media. Hence, kudos to him and his book – “The New Rules of Marketing & PR”. It’s surely a good referencing point for all new age marketers.

I am sure the above mentioned example does simply amplifies the importance of Social Media. But as a popular movie saying goes “this is my gift and this is my curse, who am I – I am Spiderman”, similarly this web of Social Media comes with its own set of problems and ramifications. It a true sense, any initiative(s) in the social media evolution, much like any other evolution requires an attribute of being persistently patience by company(s) or individual(s) driving it. However with its emergence on the marketing horizon, can we marketers still afford to blind fold ourselves from the phenomena known as Social Media Marketing?