Social Media Strategies

Tools are half of the social media equation. Learning the mechanics without understanding the relationship component can leave you on the spam or noise levels of the relationship ladder. Engagement Is a key tenet of successful, positive word of mouth media.

If it's just a question of having the right tools to push our thoughts, brands and messages out to a targeted audiences in order to elicit a response we seek, then there's been no paradigm change. When all these wonderful tools are used to listen and support, we might begin to glimpse the real change that is happening.

Yes, there is a deep paradigm change occurring in every aspect of society as we re-think our relationships with each other, with stuff, with our traditional leaders, with other life forms, with the natural environment etc and yes, social media tools and practices are hastening that process, but the latter do not yet constitute the paradigm shift in and of themselves.

I really enjoy your material though Simon - so don't stop the sharing as it's that which is shifting us at a deeper level....

Hi Anna,

Thanks for joining the conversation and thanks for showing your gratitude. I'm launching a video campaign next week. Looking at your comment I think you'll enjoy some of the content we cover,...keep an eye out for it! <-;

It actually proves that we are indeed multi-dimensional beings, not single "flat" things. It is so important to realize that preferences change with intent. There isn't a one size fits all. So many people are approaching new media that way. It is intertwined with the old, offline world. It can't help it, as people are the glue that hold the social graph together, it is not just technology.

Today, all of our thoughts can be heard cross the world
It is up to us what these thoughts may unfurl
Have you considered well just who you're talking to
Do you understand as well as they what problems to undo?
Have you provided new thought re old issues considered
Or do you just grab links to anything you think can be twittered?
Is your purpose for marketing to serve, to love and facilitate?
Or is your only purpose greed? Please, you're tempting fate.
The secret was told long, long ago: conceive, believe, achieve
But ONLY if your intention is to leave a glory trail & not to deceive.
The content provider's responsibility is greater than ever before
because through Social Media we can potentially knock on any door
What we say when that door is answered determines our future
Revered, influential thought-leader or Wanna-be in need of a suture!
It is a NEW DAY in the marketplace because now only QUALITY wins
And even then ONLY when presented to the proper audience and friends
If your syndicated message doesn't bring value, a nod and a smile
you will find yourself -- in pretty short order -- relegated to the cyber trash pile.
So, yes, we have new tools, new rules but the bottom line's still the same
You must give what you would want to receive to be victorious in this game.

Well all I can say is look at who we are talking to in one day I can speak with someone from India, Malaysia, American, Ireland, Australia & New Zealand maybe even fit a few more in a day.
This technology has me falling in love all over again, (if you did not already know I am a gadget and software freak, love it), so to get the chance to be the master at this is the ultimate. I am amazed by the quality of people I speak to in a day, now its normal life and well I do enjoy it daily. For me I am in a dream job.

The power and potential for a businessman like myself living in the mountains of West Cork, Ireland with new media simply cannot be understated. For a conversation based marketer like myself, who relies on trust and transparency when building relationships with potential business partners web 2.0 and the various tools that assist us in using the platform effectively are incredible.

I now have a worlwide audience at my fingertips who I can interract with, build trust with and engage on a daily basis.

Yes Simon, the "New Paradigm" is upon us and the "right tools" are available to make us intelligent participants. Cooperative learning communities like STI seem to be an essential part of achieving and practicing this intelligence as individuals. I agree with aviavia that it's a new order of global intelligence that confronts and awaits us with inordinate pragmatic value if we approach wisely with appropriate tools. I keep going back to importance of your 3 questions.....a stable purposeful profile as essential starting point for wise tools, community and actions to take shape in a way that works for me. namaste

The book Social Traffic has opened my eyes to a whole new way of looking at the internet and social networking. It is a powerful new tool for human interaction. We must not forget the importance of continuing to build personal human relationships with these new tools. It is easy to set up automated systems providing information from online news and blogs, and then walk away. Remember the SOCIAL in social networking.

I am concerned with the ease of spamming and the prevalence of misinformation in this new fast-paced media stream. I've found especially twitter to be a bit like a fast and furious game of telephone, sometimes difficult to weed out the facts from the rumors. Of course, print media and television also have their inaccuracies. I do appreciate the ability to stream information from initial sources, and RSS and google reader have proved to be invaluable.

Seems to me like social huge sites are the "spinal cord" of the internet. Around them we will have smaller centers and smaller around those and so on. Syndicating content is similar to the pulses which are moving through the nervous system.
Some of the content is an area based (twitter users for example) and some of the content is kept on the brain it self. (Google; indexing sites, Google open social; people). Moving the system from a 1000 or 100,000 important sites where every one is surfing, into 1,000,000's of sites syndicating content is a big step in the evolution of the internet and knowledge. It's a different level of intelligence.

This book is certainly full of all kinds of interesting information on the tools of the day.
I guess history does not really change much but rather the tools of the day that do.

My experience so far with social media once I opened myself to it has been mind blowing.I have discovered and conversed with more people doing diverse things all over the world than I could have ever even imagined a year ago.The news travels quickly and support follows just as fast.
The networks are all connected and intertwined so they make the world bigger and tighter at the same time.
It is great being apart of it and applying the teachings of your book and figuring out which tools are the best for my needs.

It's nice to finally get to a place where the information is coming to me. Pamela, I really agree with your comment about not even reading online versions anymore, but setting up the news I am interested in to come thru my network. Cell phones these days are obsolete 6 weeks after they hit the market. The news I see in my newspaper is old before I get to work to see it.

You hit the nail right, squarely on the head Simon, when you speak of the universal availability of New Media, as the RIGHT tool for the job. Everyone knows the danger of using a hammer to drive in a tack. Effectiveness and efficiency are ALL about using the proper tool for the job at hand. Of course, that all presupposes the wisdom to recognize precisely what that current job entails... (but that's another post!)

In the meantime,
Peace and Love everyone!

Social Media has brought the web to live. It has made it possible to communicate through a computer like you would have in the "old world" through human interaction. The only difference is that it does not matter any longer where in the world you are. You can reach someone on the other side of the planet just as easily as you can reach your neighbor.

The social media is the society now. We're immersed on it.
Last year I deleted my Orkut profile because I did not have time to thank
more than 500 friends 101 my happy birthday wishes.
Now I have more friends at Facebook and I changed my mind to just
accept that's impossible to go to more than 1500 walls to post a thank you.
Orkut now has a status everybody can see as is at FB.
Lot's of change, tons of info, faster and faster... People need to learn to filter,
to focus or the dispersion spreads leading to paralysis due analysis

New media really is changing the way we interact in the world. While old media now wrings hands over the loss of print media, I find myself not even reading their online versions. My news is coming thru my network. And most of the time it's coming before the old media even mentions it.