Now when I tell people (even non-marketers) about my job they have some kind of idea of what I do. The questions I get now are mostly around the concept of Social Media. What is it? Where is it heading? I don’t see how the pictures of my dog I share with my friends could ever make companies money?

Well those are some pretty major concepts, so instead of delving into each I’m going to give you some of the most helpful links about the concepts that I’ve come across.

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What is Social Media?

Wikipedia’s definition of Social Media – 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.

A presentation: What The F**K is Social Media?

Where is it heading?

• Social networks will be like air
• Social media is the future of business and personal life (and will one day save the world)

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I don’t see how the pictures of my dog I share with my friends could ever make companies money?

Wikipedia’s definition of Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, YouTube, Dailymotion, Hi5, Gather.com, social web applications (webapps) such as reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon, Flickr, iLike, Wikipedia, Squidoo, Last.fm, Twitter, Eventful, ePinions and others as well as within 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life, ActiveWorlds, Moove and There.com.

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Further Reading

• Alltop’s Top Social Media Blogs
• Dosh Dosh’s very thorough article series on Social Media

• Easier to remember
• People in your social networks can recognize you
• You can craft your reputation online through your username

It’s not realistic to keep up with creating your user name on every email, social network, photo storage, blog, etc. website. But, when you see a new site come up that has potential, or that you’ve been meaning to use at some point, it is worth taking the minute to make a profile with your screen name. I suggest having a “throwaway” email account to register to prevent having excess junk mail being sent to your regular email account.

Another benefit of creating the accounts is that you will have control over more of the top results in the search engines for “your name” keywords – a prime objective of any online reputation management campaign. This is especially important if you have a common name and would like to be the one who people see when your name is Googled. This is also a great tactic if you are well-known and would like to prevent online vandals from having their way with your name.